Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

Committing a great truth to memory is admirable; committing it to life is wisdom.

Ward, William A.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

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

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.

Aurelius, Marcus

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

Proverb, Camerounian

Wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech.

Evangel

10.

The wisdom of others remains dull till it is writ over with our own blood. We are essentially apart from the world; it bursts into our consciousness only when it sinks its teeth and nails into us.

Hoffer, Eric

11.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

12.

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Brecht, Bertolt

13.

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

Kraus, Karl

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

The foolish sayings of a rich man pass for wise ones.

Proverb, Spanish

17.

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

Basho, Matsuo

18.

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

19.

If I don't have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.

Buscaglia, Leo

20.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

21.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

22.

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

23.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

24.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

25.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

26.

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

27.

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

Mencken, H. L.

28.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

29.

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

Marx, Eleanor

30.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

31.

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

32.

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

Proverb, Chinese

33.

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

Fitzhenry, R. I.

34.

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

35.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of face within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.

Coolidge, Calvin

36.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life -- in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Seneca

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

Cato The Elder

40.

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

Young, Andrew

41.

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

42.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.