Wisdom Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

For the subtlest folly proceeds from the subtlest wisdom.

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practiced, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good.