Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise. [Proverbs 15: 31]

- Bible

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

Confucius

There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.

Luther, Martin

Understanding the limitations of human beings as well as understanding your own is the beginning of true wisdom.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Aristophanes

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Socrates

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

Kraus, Karl

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Basho, Matsuo

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Blake, William

10.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war. [9:18b, Ecclesiastes]

Bible

11.

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.

Freud, Sigmund

12.

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

Maeterlinck, Maurice

13.

Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.

Walt Whitman

14.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

15.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

17.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

19.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

20.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

21.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

Shaw, George Bernard

22.

Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God, or several signatures of that one archetypal seal, or like so many multiplied reflections of one and the same face, made in several glasses, whereof some are clearer, some obscurer, some standing nearer, some further off.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

23.

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

24.

It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

25.

Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

26.

Timing, degree and conviction are the three wise men in this life.

Fitzhenry, R. I.

27.

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, --something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.

Connolly, Cyril

28.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

29.

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

Saroyan, William

30.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Sophocles

31.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

Bacon, Francis

32.

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

Rowland, Helen

33.

A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

34.

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool.

Azai, Rabbi Ben

35.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

36.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books.

Proverb, Chinese

37.

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

38.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

39.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Smiles, Samuel

40.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

41.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

42.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

43.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

44.

The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.

Proverb, Camerounian

45.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

47.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

48.

Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

49.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

50.

Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.

Talmud, The