Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

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

Evangel

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God.

Epictetus

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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.

10.

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

Proverb, Chinese

11.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

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

13.

Through wisdom is a house built; and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge shall every room be filled with precious and pleasant riches.

Bible

14.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

15.

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

16.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

20.

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

Bible

21.

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

22.

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil -- not the strength to choose between the two.

Cheever, John

23.

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

Ward, William A.

24.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

25.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

26.

As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.

Buddha

27.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

28.

Many people might have attained wisdom had they not assumed they already had it.

29.

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

Levenson, Samuel

30.

If you wish to know the road up the mountain, ask the man who goes back and forth on it.

Zenrin

31.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

32.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

33.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

34.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

Colton, Charles Caleb

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.

Cullen Hightower

39.

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

40.

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

Saroyan, William

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning.

Noll, Chuck

45.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

46.

The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.

Borland, Hal

47.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

48.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

49.

Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

50.

No man is wise enough by himself.