Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.

- Walt Whitman

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

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

Buddha

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

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Pindar

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

Boileau, Nicholas

10.

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

11.

Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.

Talmud, The

12.

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

13.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

14.

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

Ziggy

15.

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

Proverb, Chinese

16.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

17.

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

18.

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.

Blake, William

19.

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

20.

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

21.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

22.

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

Proverb, Spanish

23.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

24.

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

25.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

26.

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all your getting get understanding.

Bible

27.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

28.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

29.

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.

30.

The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. [Psalms 19:7]

Bible

31.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

32.

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

33.

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

Ward, William A.

34.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

35.

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

Elizabeth, Queen

36.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

37.

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

38.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

Mencken, H. L.

39.

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.

40.

The end result of wisdom is... good deeds.

Talmud, The

41.

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

42.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

43.

Timing, degree and conviction are the three wise men in this life.

Fitzhenry, R. I.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

47.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

48.

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

Larson, Doug

49.

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