Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning.

Evans, Bergen

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

Confucius

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

Proverb, Chinese

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

14.

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

15.

Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.

Robbie Gass

16.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

17.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

18.

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

Levenson, Samuel

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.

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

21.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

22.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Aristophanes

23.

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

24.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

25.

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

26.

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

James Boswell

27.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

28.

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

Buddha

29.

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

30.

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

Cocteau, Jean

31.

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

Twain, Mark

32.

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

Kraus, Karl

33.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

34.

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

Talmud, The

35.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

36.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

37.

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

38.

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

Basho, Matsuo

39.

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

40.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

41.

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

Watson, Thomas J.

42.

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.

43.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

44.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

45.

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

Marx, Eleanor

46.

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

Buddha

47.

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

Oprah Winfrey

48.

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

Epictetus

49.

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

50.

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