Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Ziggy

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

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

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

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

Brecht, Bertolt

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

10.

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

Aristophanes

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

14.

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .

15.

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.

Hoagland, Edward

16.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

17.

Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men.

Proverb, Chinese

18.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

19.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

20.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

21.

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, -- every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.

Marden, Orison Swett

22.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

23.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

24.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Sophocles

25.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

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

Fitzhenry, R. I.

27.

Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.

Elizabeth, Queen

28.

The extreme limit of wisdom --that's what the public calls madness.

Cocteau, Jean

29.

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.

Butler, Samuel

30.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

31.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

32.

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

Cato The Elder

33.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

34.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

35.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

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

37.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

38.

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

Mencken, H. L.

39.

The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man.

Handey, Jack

40.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

41.

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

42.

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

Marilyn vos Savant

43.

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

Blake, William

44.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

45.

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

Proverb, Spanish

46.

True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.

Bouton, E. S.

47.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

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

Talmud, The

49.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

50.

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