Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Quintilian

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

Epictetus

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

Cocteau, Jean

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Marx, Eleanor

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

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

Ward, William A.

10.

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.

11.

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

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.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

14.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

15.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

16.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

17.

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

Watson, Thomas J.

18.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

19.

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

20.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

21.

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

Basho, Matsuo

22.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

23.

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

Bible

24.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

25.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

26.

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

27.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

28.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

29.

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

30.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

31.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

32.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

33.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

34.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

35.

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

36.

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

Cheever, John

37.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

38.

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

39.

The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.

Boileau, Nicholas

40.

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

41.

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

Butler, Samuel

42.

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

Proverb, Chinese

43.

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

Saroyan, William

44.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

45.

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness.

Covey, Stephen R.

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.

Proverb, Camerounian

49.

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

50.

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

Proverb, Spanish