Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.

- Blake, William

Best Quotes about Wisdom

The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. [Psalms 19:7]

Bible

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

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

Bible

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

Francis of Assisi, St.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. [1 Corinthians 3:18-19]

Bible

Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. [Proverbs 3:13-15]

Bible

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

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

10.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

11.

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

Basho, Matsuo

12.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

Asimov, Isaac

13.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Sophocles

14.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

15.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.

Ziggy

17.

The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.

Carlyle, Thomas

18.

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd preferred to talk.

Larson, Doug

19.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

20.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

21.

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

Maeterlinck, Maurice

22.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

23.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

Edmund Burke

24.

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

25.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

26.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

27.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

28.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

29.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

30.

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

31.

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.

Watson, Thomas J.

32.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

33.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

34.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

35.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

36.

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

37.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Socrates

38.

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

Proverb, Chinese

39.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

40.

By the time your life is finished, you will have learned just enough to begin it well.

Marx, Eleanor

41.

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

42.

Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning.

Evans, Bergen

43.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

44.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

Mencken, H. L.

46.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

47.

The live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

48.

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.

49.

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

50.

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed Wisdom. And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig