Quotes about wisdom

We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.

— James Truslow Adams

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

— Aristophanes

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.

— Isaac Asimov

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

— Marcus Aurelius

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

— Rabbi Ben Azai

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

— Francis Bacon

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

— Francis Bacon

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.

— Francis Bacon

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

— Matsuo Basho

Wise men still seek Him today.

— Dan Bell

Action should culminate in wisdom.

— Bhagavad Gita

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

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

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

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

He that walketh with wise men shall be wise.

— Bible

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

— Bible

In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

— Bible

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

— Bible

Wisdom is better than weapons of war. [9:18b, Ecclesiastes]

— Bible

So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.

— Bible

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

— Bible

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

— Bible

Better to get wisdom than gold.

— Bible

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

— Bible

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

— Josh Billings

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

— Frank Birch

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.

— William Blake

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

— William Blake

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

— William Blake

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

— Nicholas Boileau

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

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.

— Hal Borland

True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.

— E. S. Bouton

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

— Bertolt Brecht

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

— Buddha

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

— Buddha

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.

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Leo Buscaglia

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

— Samuel Butler

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Cato The Elder

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

— Miguel De Cervantes

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

— Geoffrey Chaucer

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

— John Cheever

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

— Georges Clemenceau

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

— Jean Cocteau

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

— John Churton Collins

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.

— Charles Caleb Colton

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

— Confucius

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

— Confucius

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.

— Cyril Connolly

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.

— Calvin Coolidge

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.

— Stephen R. Covey

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.

— Ralph J. Cudworth

All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.

— Alexandre Dumas

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

— Abba Eban

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

— Queen Elizabeth

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a festival only to the wise.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A wise man is he who does not grieve for the thing which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

— Epictetus

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

— Epictetus

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

— Euripides

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

— Evangel

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

— Bergen Evans

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

— R. I. Fitzhenry

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.

— St. Francis of Assisi

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

— Felix Frankfurter

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

— Benjamin Franklin

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

— Benjamin Franklin

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.

— Sigmund Freud

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

— Ibn Gabirol

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

— Ibn Gabirol

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

— John Kenneth Galbraith

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

— Mahatma Gandhi

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

— Frank Garbutt

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.

— Kahlil Gibran

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

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Wisdom is found only in truth.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.

— Oliver Goldsmith

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, and fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.

— Oliver Goldsmith

The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man.

— Jack Handey

Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it.

— Hermann Hesse

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.

— Hermann Hesse

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.

— Edward Hoagland

Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.

— Thomas Hobbes

The wisdom of others remains dull till it is writ over with our own blood. We are essentially apart from the world; it bursts into our consciousness only when it sinks its teeth and nails into us.

— Eric Hoffer

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

— Herbert Clark Hoover

Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.

— Horace

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

— William James

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

— William James

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

— Samuel Johnson

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

— (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) Juvenal