wisdom Quotes

“Never hurry and never worry!”

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”

“It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.”

“Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.”

“Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.”

“A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men.”

“Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures, hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?”

“Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you’d see.”

“There is a wisdom of the head, and... there is a wisdom of the heart.”

“A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”

“Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin.”

“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.”

“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

“If he is old enough to ask the question he is old enough to receive true answers. I am not putting the thoughts into his head, but helping him unfold those already there. These children are wiser than we are...”

“Because they are mean is no reason why I should be. I hate such things, and though I think I’ve a right to be hurt, I don’t intend to show it.”

“Angry people are not always wise.”

“You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.”

“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”

“She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! Alas! She must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.”

“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”

“As a kid, you learn to measure long before you understand the size or value of anything. Eventually, if you’re lucky, you learn that you’ve been measuring all wrong.”

“The wise warrior avoids the battle.”

“Wash yourself of yourself.”

He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.

“There is a basket of fresh bread on your head, yet you go door to door asking for crusts.”

“No, that is the great fallacy, the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”

“It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.”

“I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me? Look at your eyes. They are small, but they see enormous things.”

“Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups! They swim the huge fluid freedom.”

“Men and their cubs are very wise. He may be a help in time.”

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

“Notice I didn’t specify what kind of doom, so no matter what happens, I predicted it. How very wise of me.”

“The answer is logic. Or, to put it another way, the ability to reason analytically. Applied properly, it can overcome any lack of wisdom, which one only gains through age and experience.”

“Wise? No, I’ve just learned how to think.”

“The old Once-ler still lives here. Ask him. He knows.”

As I ate she began the first of what we later called “my lessons in living.” She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations.

The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.

Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication.

And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. . . . Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

They are the magi.

“Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.”

“There is beauty in compassion, but one must learn wisdom too.”

“Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.”

“There’s not one wise man among twenty that will praise himself.”

“Had you been as wise as bold, Young in limbs, in judgement old, Your answer had not been inscrolled. Fare you well, your suit is cold.”

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won’t be wiser?

“Those friends who knew, laughed to scorn the idea that Marguerite St. Just had married a fool for the sake of the worldly advantages with which he might endow her. They knew, as a matter of fact, that Marguerite St. Just cared nothing about money, and still less about a title.”

“‘It has made me better loving you,’ he said on another occasion; ‘it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter.‘”

“And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

“She had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organization, should move in the realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic.”

It may be taken for granted that, rash as the Americans are, when they are prudent there is good reason for it.

“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.”

“Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise.”

“But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.”

“So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.”

“Gandalf was shorter in stature than the other two; but his long white hair, his sweeping beard, and his broad shoulders, made him look like some wise king of ancient legend. In his aged face under great snowy brows his eyes were set like coals that could suddenly burst into fire.”

“The wise speak only of what they know.”

“There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; no wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, and proud men in old age learn to be wise.”

“From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom...”

“Do you hear?” Vasudeva’s mute gaze asked. Siddhartha nodded. “Listen better!” Vasudeva whispered.

“A prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice.”

“How did this girl come to be? I used to ask myself. Sometimes I thought she should be teaching me. She seems to be in touch with something that the rest of us are missing.”

“Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught.”

“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.”

“He had started to suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, that the wise Brahmans had already revealed to him the most and best of their wisdom, that they had already filled his expecting vessel with their richness, and the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied.”

“They knew everything, the Brahmans and their holy books, they knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the gods, they knew infinitely much—but was it valuable to know all of this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the solely important thing?”

“I wish that you, oh exalted one, would not be angry with me,” said the young man. “I have not spoken to you like this to argue with you, to argue about words. You are truly right, there is little to opinions. But let me say this one more thing: I have not doubted in you for a single moment. I have not doubted for a single moment that you are Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal towards which so many thousands of Brahmans and sons of Brahmans are on their way. You have found salvation from death. It has come to you in the course of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through meditation, through realizations, through enlightenment. It has not come to you by means of teachings! And—thus is my thought, oh exalted one—nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! You will not be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment! The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it teaches many to live righteously, to avoid evil. But there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands. This is what I have thought and realized, when I have heard the teachings. This is why I am continuing my travels—not to seek other, better teachings, for I know there are none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal by myself or to die. But often, I’ll think of this day, oh exalted one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a holy man.”

Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.

“Vasudeva rose. “It is late,” he said, “let’s go to sleep. I can’t tell you that other thing, oh friend. You’ll learn it, or perhaps you know it already. See, I’m no learned man, I have no special skill in speaking, I also have no special skill in thinking. All I’m able to do is to listen and to be godly, I have learned nothing else. If I was able to say and teach it, I might be a wise man, but like this I am only a ferryman, and it is my task to ferry people across the river.” ”

Govinda said: “Still, oh Siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as it seems to me. I believe in you and know that you haven’t followed a teacher. But haven’t you found something by yourself, though you’ve found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you to live? If you would like to tell me some of these, you would delight my heart.” Quoth Siddhartha: “I’ve had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and again. Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one’s heart. There have been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.”

“Prudence consists in knowing how to distinguish the character of troubles, and for choice to take the lesser evil.”

“But where were the Brahmans, where the priests, where the wise men or penitents, who had succeeded in not just knowing this deepest of all knowledge but also to live it?”

We that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

“Alexander Rostov was neither scientist nor sage; but at the age of sixty-four he was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate and our opinions evolve--if not glacially, then at least gradually. Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew.”

“In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons.”

“We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.”

“Even strength must bow to wisdom sometimes.”

“Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.”

“The heart of the matter: You should never belong fully to something that is outside yourself. It is very important to find a balance in your belonging.”

“Love opens the door of ancient recognition. You enter. You come home to each other at last. As Euripides said, ‘Two friends, one soul.‘”

“The secret and the sacred are sisters. When the secret is not respected, the sacred vanishes. Consequently, reflection should not shine too severe or aggressive a light on the world of the soul.”

“When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer.”

“The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.”

“Your soul knows the geography of your destiny.”

“Instead of being enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by it; He could outfly any gull in the Flock, and he had learned skills that the others were only gradually coming to know.”

“All through your life your soul takes care of you...your soul is alive and awakened, gathering, sheltering and guiding your ways and days in the world. In effect, your soul is your secret shelter.”

“A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved and the beloved’s love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved.”

“May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul. May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe. May you have respect for your own individuality and difference. ”

“May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening. May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.”

“Keep something beautiful in your heart to survive difficult times and enjoy good times.”

“A friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you.”

“Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition.”

“...to gaze into the face of another is to gaze into the depth and entirety of his life.”

“The cast is so soft and slow that it can be followed like an ash settling from a fireplace chimney. One of life’s quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful, even if it is only a floating ash.”

“For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.”

“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”

“Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia.”

“There comes a time when you’re losing a fight that it just doesn’t make sense to keep on fighting. It’s not that you’re being a quitter, it’s just that you’ve got the sense to know when enough is enough.”

“We are old now, yet we were young this morning, when we carried our glass box through the streets of the City to the Home of the Scholars.”

“The study of the wisdom teachings should be a continuous process in which the teachings become the predominant factor of life rather than the useless and oftentimes negative and illusory thoughts of those who are ignorant of spiritual truths.”

“Just like there’s a time that a smart person know enough is enough, there’s a time when you know you’ve got to fight”

“Those who put themselves in His hands will become perfect, as He is perfect- perfect in love, wisdom, joy, beauty, health, and immortality. The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment. How far the change will have gone before death in any particular Christian is uncertain.”

“By living a life based on wisdom and truth, one can discover the divinity of the soul, its union to the universe, the supreme peace and contentment which comes from satisfying the inner drive for self discovery.”

“No single one can possess greater wisdom than the many Scholars who are elected by all men for their wisdom. Yet we can. We do.”

“Do not assess a man who has nothing, and thus falsify your pen.”

“It’s funny how ideas are, in a lot of ways they’re just like seeds. Both of them start real, real small and then woop, zoop, sloop…before you can say Jack Robinson they’ve gone and grown a lot bigger than you ever thought they could.”

“Man is separated into soul and body, and only when the two sides of his senses agree together, does utterance of its thought conceived by mind take place.”

“Conceal your heart, control your mouth. Beware of releasing the restraints in you; Listen if you want to endure in the mouth of the hearers. Speak after you have mastered the craft.”

“Everywhere one may hear of ravenous dogs and wolves, and cruel men-eaters, but it is not so easy to find states that are well and wisely governed.”

“I’ve lived long enough to know I’m not one-hundred-percent anything.”

“It’s funny how much of childhood is about proximity.”

“How am I supposed to know what’s real and what’s not? It feels like I’m the only one who doesn’t know the difference.”

“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”

“I could tell that Mrs. Winterbottom was trying to rise above some awful sadness she was feeling, but Prudence couldn’t see that. Prudence had her own agenda, just as I had had my own agenda that day my mother wanted me to walk with her. I couldn’t see my mother’s sadness.”

“Forgive me…for everything…I have done…A─ a wiser father…may have done differently. I am not…wise.”

″‘You, our friend, our intelligence, our invisible protector’, said he, ‘accept this commission; you have merited it more than any of us by your wisdom and your counsels...‘”

“First reports of him came to me through Chad King, who’d shown me a few letters from him written in a New Mexico reform school. I was tremendously interested in the letters because they so naively and sweetly asked Chad to teach him all about Nietzsche and all the wonderful intellectual things that Chad knew. At one point Carlo and I talked about the letters and wondered if we would ever meet the strange Dean Moriarty.”

“I wondered how he could live with her like this. He had more books than I’ve ever seen in all my life - two libraries, two rooms loaded from floor to ceiling around all four walls, and such books as the Apocryphal Something-or-Other in ten volumes. He played Verdi operas and pantomimed them in his pajamas with a great rip down the back. He didn’t give a damn about anything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with original seventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a big spider through the streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic ecstasy. He lisped, he writhed, he flopped, he moaned, he howled, he fell back in despair. He could hardly get a word out, he was so excited with life.”

“Salvation is the freeing of the soul from its bodily fetters, becoming a God through knowledge and wisdom, controlling the forces of the cosmos instead of being a slave to them, subduing the lower nature and through awakening the Higher Self, ending the cycle of rebirth and dwelling with the netters who direct who direct and control the Great Plan.”

“...beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.”

“Abandon your notions of the past, without attributing a temporal sequence! Cut off your mental associations regarding the future, without anticipation! Rest in a spacious modality, without clinging to [the thoughts of] the present. Do not meditate at all, since there is nothing upon which to meditate. Instead, revelation will come through undistracted mindfulness — Since there is nothing by which you can be distracted.”

“The more of wisdom we know, the more we may earn. That man who seeks to learn more of his craft shall be richly rewarded.”

″‘Wisdom is sometimes given to the young, as well as to the old,’ he said; ‘and what you have spoken is wise, not to call it by a better word.‘”

“My mind possessed the wisdoms of the ages, and there were no words adequate to describe them.”

“Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom.”

“Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. [...] It is leadership. The word ‘judicious’ means requiring judgment, and judgment requires more than instinct; it requires thoughtful and often painful decision making.”

“His idea is that whenever you encounter any other grokking thing—man, woman, or stray cat…you are meeting your ‘other end.’ The universe is a thing we whipped up among us and agreed to forget the gag. Jubal looked sour. ‘Solipsism and pantheism. Together they explain anything. Cancel out any inconvenient fact, reconcile all theories, include any facts or delusions you like. But it’s cotton candy, all taste and no substance—as unsatisfactory as solving a story by saying: ‘—then the little boy fell out of bed and woke up.‘”

“Understanding comes with life.”

“I’d love to watch TV all the time but it rots our brains.”

“You alone are the life which never dies and the wisdom that needs no light besides itself, but illumines all who need to be enlightened, the wisdom that governs the world, down to the leaves that flutter on the trees.”

“I know that already, everything’s breakable.”

“All my empty dreams suddenly lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth.”

“He hopes that the hand which stokes his forehead will never stop – will never die. He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won’t be sitting around the living room, talking about where they’ve come from, and what they’ve seen, and what’s happened to them and their kinfolk.”

“Wisdom, Happiness, and Courage are not waiting somewhere out beyond sight at the end of a straight line; they’re part of a continuous cycle that begins right here. They’re not only the ending, but the beginning as well.”

“For the record, he who does fear death also dies only once, but whatever.”

“God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name by way of illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.”

“I go about the world, obedient to the god, and search and make enquiry into the wisdom of any one, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and my occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god.”

“For the fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.”

“Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.”

“A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn’t really care, wisdom does.”

“The virtuous rest in virtue; the wise desire virtue.”

“The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can’t save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.”

“I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that others less esteemed were really wiser and better.”

“Well, God give them wisdom that have it. And those that are fools, let them use their talents.”

“The Martians—dead! ... slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.”

“I did not know that he had put into my hands the secret that would open far darker rooms than this- places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.”

“I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise.”

“Alas, alas, what misery to be wise When wisdom profits nothing!”

“For whoso thinks that wisdom dwells with him, That he alone can speak or think aright, Such oracles are empty breath when tried.”

“A wise man heeds all matters great or small.”

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

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

“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can.”

“You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge.”

“My old thoughts about the silt of a billion years covering all this and all cities and generations eventually is just a dumb old thought, ‘Only a silly sober fool could think it, imagine gloating over such nonsense’ (because in one sense the drinker learns wisdom, in the words of Goethe or Blake or whichever it was “The pathway to wisdom lies through excess’) – But in this condition you can only say ‘Wisdom is just another way to make people sick.‘”

“Wisdom is not the result of having learned enough; it comes when you know there is never enough learning.”

“God can multiply your time and help you get more done. He can multiply your wisdom and help you to make better decisions.”

“Life is wasted if we do not grasp the glory of the cross, cherish it for the treasure that it is, and cleave to it as the highest price of every pleasure and the deepest comfort in every pain. What was once foolishness to us—a crucified God—must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.”

“Every twenty-four God has a fresh new supply of grace, of favor, of wisdom, of forgiveness.”

“The warrior does not wield a weapon; they are a weapon. Their strength does not come from the weapons they hold but from the wisdom that has taken hold of them.”

“Yet farther will I open unto thee This wisdom of all wisdoms, uttermost, The which possessing, all My saints have passed To perfectness.”

“Fearlessness, singleness of soul, the will Always to strive for wisdom; opened hand And governed appetites; and piety, And love of lonely study; humbleness, Uprightness, heed to injure nought which lives, Truthfulness, slowness unto wrath, a mind That lightly letteth go what others prize; And equanimity, and charity Which spieth no man’s faults; and tenderness Towards all that suffer; a contented heart, Fluttered by no desires; a bearing mild, Modest, and grave, with manhood nobly mixed, With patience, fortitude, and purity; An unrevengeful spirit, never given To rate itself too high;--such be the signs, O Indian Prince! of him whose feet are set On that fair path which leads to heavenly birth!”

“Wisdom is the warrior’s greatest weapon. When you have wisdom, you are never unarmed, you are never defenseless, and you are never powerless. You need skill to know how to shoot an arrow straight, but only wisdom can teach you how to never need to shoot it.”

“Lust and dull slumber and the lazy hours Have well nigh banished virtue from mankind. Hence have man’s nature and his treacherous mind Left their free course, enmeshed in sin’s soft bowers. The very light of heaven hath lost its powers Mid fading ways our loftiest dreams to find; Men jeer at him whose footsteps are inclined Where Helicon from dewy fountains showers. Who seeks the laurel? who the myrtle twines? ‘Wisdom, thou goest a beggar and unclad,’ So scoffs the crowd, intent on worthless gain. Few are the hearts that prize the poet’s lines: Yet, friend, the more I hail thy spirit glad! Let not the glory of thy purpose wane!”

“Our Creed does not command us to be free. It commands us to be wise.”

“It’s fear that makes us lose our conscience. It’s also what transforms us into cowards.”

“Wisdom is meant to be shared, so let’s start sharing what we’ve learned to make each other better. Let’s start building each other up. Let’s live up to our potential and start ruling the world.”

“All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.”

“Ruler of Athens, Lord and Governor, And in his time so great a conqueror There was none mightier beneath the sun. And many a rich country he had won, What with his wisdom and his troops of horse.”

“As the bee collects nectar and departs without injuring the flower, or its colour or scent, so let a sage dwell in his village.”

“The king, who was the wisest man in the kingdom, knew well there was a time when things must be done and questions left till afterwards.”

“The fool who knows his foolishness, is wise at least so far. But a fool who thinks himself wise, he is called a fool indeed.”

“Each time, you’ll learn something. Each time, you’ll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective. Each time, a little more of the competition falls away. Until all that is left is you: the best version of you.”

“If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation.”

“Today Plato is nearly forgotten. His beliefs include the notion that people who govern should be intelligent, rational, self-controlled, and in love with wisdom, an idea that has long been discredited.”

“Mentioning the faults of others does not rid us of our own.”

″ A democracy with this effort by its people must and can face its problems, that it must show patience, restraint, compassion, as well as wisdom and strength and courage, in the struggle for solutions which are very rarely easy to find.”

“Most prospects in life are marred by the shuffling worldly wisdom of men, who, forgetting that they cannot serve God and mammon, endeavor to blend contradictory things.”

“The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable.”

“It is a seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation. It is this and a great deal more, and demands a somewhat better head and hand than mine to describe it well.”

“Your willingness to jump will open doors for you. Every jump will increase your wisdom and broaden your vision.”

“The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of Understanding”

“They all know that it has to be there . . . they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers . . . depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.”

“When the ears of the student are ready to hear, then cometh the lips to fill them with Wisdom.”

“It is clear, then, that wisdom is knowledge having to do with certain principles and causes. But now, since it is this knowledge that we are seeking, we must consider the following point: Of what kind of principles and of what kind of causes is wisdom the knowledge?”

“Poor Old Ones! Scientists to the last -- what had they done that we would not have done in their place?”

“But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”

“In many parts of this world water is Scarce and precious. People sometimes have to walk A great distance Then carry heavy jugs upon their heads. Because of our wisdom, we will travel far for love.”

“Lord, let the spirit of wisdom rest on the White House and Capitol. Protect our president and his family from sabotage, lies, conspiracies, terrorist attacks, enemy infiltrations, and assassination. Put Your angels around the first lady and the children. Let their personal affairs be covered by the blood of Jesus.”

“Nobody likes to see a stupid guy wise up.”

“He was like me--he just yearned for there to be someone in the world like Leo, someone with a secret knowledge and a wisdom beyond his own.”

“An unwise man thinks he’ll live forever if only he can avoid a fight, but old age will give him no peace, even if weapons do.”

“A man is happy if he finds praise and friendship within himself. You can never be sure of where you stand in someone else’s heart.”

“Mary had Joseph. Esther had Mordecai. Ruth had Boaz. We will not become the women God intends us to be without the guidance, counsel, wisdom, strength, and love of good men in our lives.”

“You should be only a little wise, never too wise. A wise man’s heart is seldom glad if he’s truly wise.”

“At every doorway before you enter, you should look around, you should take a good look around--for you never know where your enemies might be seated within.”

“A traveler cannot bring a better burden on the road than plenty of wisdom, and he can bring no worse a burden than too much alcohol.”

“A wise man is not showy about his wisdom; he guards it carefully. He is silent when he comes to a stranger’s home. The wise man seldom wanders into harm, for you can never have a more faithful friend than a good supply of wisdom.”

“Martin the Warrior used the sword only for right and good. This is why it has become a symbol of power to Redwall. Knowledge is gained through wisdom, my friend. Use the sword wisely.”

“Knowledge is a thing that one cannot have enough of. It is the fruit of wisdom, to be eaten carefully and digested fully, unlike that lunch you are bolting down, little friend.”

“It is because of its emptiness that the cup is useful.”

“Sitting around miserable all day won’t make you any happier.”

“The straight path must sometimes be crooked.”

“She feel’s it’s important to come prepared.”

“If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you.”

″‘Tell me, Cricket, who you may be?’ ‘I am the Talking-Cricket, and I have lived in this room a hundred years and more.’ ‘Now, however, this room is mine,’ said the puppet, ‘and if you would do me a pleasure go away at once, without even turning around.’ ‘I will not go,’ answered the Cricket, ‘until I have told you a great truth.‘”

“Don’t trust to those who promise to make you rich in a day. Usually they are either mad or rogues.”

“Time...why is it time? What is time, dad?”

“It is said that the current duke had an ancestor so wise that even as a child he could do complex mathematical calculations. prove difficult geometric theorems, and accurately locate the constellations in the sky.”

“He’s a man of few words, and he doesn’t know what either of them means,” people said, but not when he was within hearing.”

“Most of the old moles I know with they had listened less to their fears and more to their dreams.”

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“There is a difference. That book is for true healers. Men of age and wisdom. There is more in there than even an apothecary knows. More than an apothecary should know.”

“What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?”

“And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”

There’s a warmth in this book, a profound understanding of the cycle of birth and death, and a wisdom that knows that big things like joy and wonder are often found in little things like robins and Liquorice Allsorts and penknives.

“Estrangement from the collective consciousness of humanity’s wisdom is just one more thing that sets scythes apart from others.”

″‘Does anyone truly get anyone, Jay?’ ‘Deep,’ I say sarcastically. ‘Nothing like wisdom from on high.‘”

All his wisdom is but folly before Zeus.

“Then accumulated knowledge is not wisdom? A Great heavens, no! If knowledge were wisdom, the achievements of science would not have been converted into implements of destruction.”

“Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad -- at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity.”

“Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and turn it into wisdom. His mind had no horizon - and his sympathy had no warp. He could talk to children, telling them very profound things so that they understood. He lived in a world of wonders, of excitement. He was concupiscent as a rabbit and gentle as hell. Everyone who knew him was indebted to him. And everyone who thought of him thought next, ‘I really must do something nice for Doc.”

“This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.”

“If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.”

“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”

“if you challenge the conventional wisdom, you will find ways to do things much better than they are currently done.”

“But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. ”

“The masses are always wrong...Wisdom is doing everything the crowd does not do. All you do is reverse the totality of their learning and you have the heaven they’re looking for.”

“Knowledge is a matter of knowing facts. Wisdom is a matter of understanding and applying principles. A certain amount of knowledge is necessary for wisdom, and without wisdom, knowledge is not only useless, it’s dangerous.”

“In the first place, the Browns are a fighting family. One may question their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about their fight there can be no question.”

“Good doesn’t always follow from good deeds, nor bad deeds result form bad, does it? Even the wise and good cannot see the end of all actions. Scary idea!”

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own...”

“What is the fruit of these teachings? Only the most beautiful and proper harvest of the truly educated-tranquility, fearlessness and freedom. We should not trust the masses who say only the free can be educated, but rather the lovers of wisdom who say that only the educated are free.”

“Pain doesn’t get easier. You just have to get stronger.”

“It’s not wandering if I know how to get home.”

“Don’t spoil her with toys; spoil her with books.”

“I admire the activity of your benevolence,” observed Mary, “but every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.”

“We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the éclat of a proverb.”

Owl tried to think of something very wise to say, but couldn’t, so he flew off to tell the others.

These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.

Owl hasn’t exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things.

“Amazing,” said Owl, looking at the notice again, and getting, just for a moment, a curious sort of feeling that something had happened to Christopher Robin’s back. “What did you do?” “Nothing.” “The best thing,” said Owl wisely.

“Nevertheless,” said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale, “this badge hath taught me— it daily teaches me— it is teaching me at this moment— lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself.”

“There is truth in it, Jo, that’s the secret. Humor and pathos make it alive, and you have found your style at last. You wrote with no thoughts of fame and money, and put your heart into it, my daughter. You have had the bitter, now comes the sweet. Do your best, and grow as happy as we are in your success.”

“You’ve got a treasure, young man, see that you deserve it.”

These children are wiser than we are, and I have no doubt the boy understands every word I have said to him.

“I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library at Rome; but after reading them over many times, I found out that with one hundred and fifty well-chosen books a man possesses, if not a complete summary of all human knowledge, at least all that a man need really know.

Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man, who, like Satan, thought himself for an instant equal to God, but who now acknowledges with Christian humility that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom. Perhaps those prayers may soften the remorse he feels in his heart. As for you, Morrel, this is the secret of my conduct towards you. There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living.

“Albert, my child,” said Mercédès, “if I had a stronger heart, that is the counsel I would have given you; your conscience has spoken when my voice became too weak; listen to its dictates. You had friends, Albert; break off their acquaintance. But do not despair; you have life before you, my dear Albert, for you are yet scarcely twenty-two years old; and as a pure heart like yours wants a spotless name, take my father’s—it was Herrera. I am sure, my dear Albert, whatever may be your career, you will soon render that name illustrious.”