Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

- James Boswell

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

Follow then the shining ones, the wise, the awakened, the loving, for they know how to work and forbear.

Buddha

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

Buddha

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

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.

Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

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

Evans, Bergen

10.

Inner wisdom is more important than wealth. The more you spend it, the more you gain.

Oprah Winfrey

11.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

12.

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

Blake, William

13.

What a wonderful world this would be if there were as many wise people as there are clever people.

14.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

Thurber, James

15.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

16.

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

Proverb, Chinese

17.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

18.

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

Kraus, Karl

19.

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

Watson, Thomas J.

20.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

21.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

22.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

23.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

24.

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

25.

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

26.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

27.

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

Young, Andrew

28.

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

29.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

30.

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

31.

The days that are still to come are the wisest witnesses.

Pindar

32.

I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.

Hesse, Hermann

33.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

34.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

Nietzsche, Friedrich

35.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.

Gabirol, Ibn

39.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

40.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

James Boswell

41.

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

Basho, Matsuo

42.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

43.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

44.

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

45.

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

Evangel

46.

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

Aristophanes

47.

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

48.

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