Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

- Quintilian

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

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

Bible

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.

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.

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

Garbutt, Frank

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

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

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

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

10.

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

Ward, William A.

11.

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

Cullen Hightower

12.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

Quintilian

13.

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

14.

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

15.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

16.

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

Buddha

17.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

22.

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

23.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

24.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

25.

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

26.

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

27.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

28.

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

Levenson, Samuel

29.

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

30.

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

Young, Andrew

31.

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

32.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

33.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

34.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

35.

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

Oprah Winfrey

36.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

37.

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

38.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

42.

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

Bible

43.

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

Epictetus

44.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

45.

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.

46.

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

Marx, Eleanor

47.

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

Elizabeth, Queen

48.

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

49.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

50.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus