Wisdom Quotes

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.

Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.

Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.

It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.

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

Cleverness is not wisdom.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

Our bodies are at once the receiving and transmitting stations for life itself. It is the highest wisdom to recognize this fact and train our bodies to render them sensitive and responsive to nature. art and religion.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Lord, bless me with the ability to achieve all that I can, and the wisdom to realize it doesn't all have to be by tomorrow!

Without wisdom, the future has no meaning, no valuable purpose.

There was endless action - not just football, but sailboats, tennis and other things: movement. There was endless talk - the ambassador at the head of the table laying out the prevailing wisdom, but everyone else weighing in with their opinions and taking part.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.

Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.

Of all our possessions, wisdom alone is imortal.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.

Much of the wisdom of one age, is the folly of the next.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.