Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Carlyle, Thomas

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

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

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. [Proverbs 3:13-15]

Bible

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

Evangel

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

Cato The Elder

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

10.

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

Epictetus

11.

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

12.

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

13.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

14.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

15.

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

Cheever, John

16.

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

17.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

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.

Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

20.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

21.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

22.

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

Proverb, Camerounian

23.

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

24.

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

Basho, Matsuo

25.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

26.

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

27.

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

Proverb, Spanish

28.

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

Garbutt, Frank

29.

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

Bible

30.

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

Cullen Hightower

31.

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

Pindar

32.

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

James Boswell

33.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

34.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

35.

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.

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

39.

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

40.

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

Blake, William

41.

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

Kraus, Karl

42.

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

Quintilian

43.

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

Cocteau, Jean

44.

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

45.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

46.

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

Bible

47.

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

48.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

49.

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

50.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg