Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

- Plautus, Titus Maccius

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom is perishable. Unlike information or knowledge, it cannot be stored in a computer or recorded in a book. It expires with each passing generation.

Taylor, Sid

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

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

Blake, William

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

Cullen Hightower

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Gibran, Kahlil

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

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

Ward, William A.

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

Ziggy

10.

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

Bible

11.

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

12.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

13.

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

14.

The wisdom of a learned man comet by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. [Ecclesiasticus 38:25]

Bible

15.

When you move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment and aversion alike, there comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and you life in the wisdom of the Self.

Bhagavad Gita

16.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

23.

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.

Twain, Mark

24.

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

Cato The Elder

25.

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

26.

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

27.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Larson, Doug

31.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

32.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

33.

Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.

Goldsmith, Oliver

34.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

35.

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

Basho, Matsuo

36.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

37.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

38.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

39.

The man who questions opinions is wise. The man who quarrels with facts is a fool.

Garbutt, Frank

40.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

41.

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

Marx, Eleanor

42.

The wise man says it cannot be done, but the fool goes and does it.

43.

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

44.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

Shaw, George Bernard

45.

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

Socrates

46.

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

47.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

48.

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

49.

We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.

Adams, James Truslow

50.

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