Wisdom Quotes

"If you want to go east, don't go west."

"The doors of wisdom are never shut."

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."

"It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'"

"The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk."

"Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom."

"A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool."

"A mouse does not rely on just one hole."

"We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don't allow our bodies to heal, and we don't allow our minds and hearts to heal."

"Much wisdom often goes with fewest words."

"To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly."

"The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness."

"Wisdom begins at the end."

"Earthly wisdom is doing what comes naturally. Godly wisdom is doing what the Holy Spirit compels us to do."

"Wisdom is a sacred communion."

"At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly."

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

"Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next."

"Rarely promise, but, if lawful, constantly perform."

"I know that inner wisdom is more precious than wealth. The more you spend it, the more you gain."

"Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two."

"Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form."

"Tis but a part we see, and not a whole."

"Every silver lining has a cloud."

"Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it."

"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings."

"The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for wisdom, and this means a short roll call of names; Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epicurus, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche."

"Full of wisdom are the ordinations of fate."

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

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

"Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency."

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

"Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color."

"Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation."

"Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut, that held its ground."

"While I have no empirical evidence to back this up, I bet that the number of homosexual people per thousand has not fluctuated all that much over the centuries. I do not believe the dented wisdom my father used to extol, that homosexuality was a sure sign of a civilization in decline."

"No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will."

"I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom."

"If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements."

"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man."

"Please all, and you will please none."

"A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom."

"The weak have remedies, the wise have joys; superior wisdom is superior bliss."

"Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it."

"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."

"Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines."

"It is good even for old men to learn wisdom."

"The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it."

"Never cut what you can untie."

"The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure."