Quotes About Wisdom

You are still young enough to think that torment of the spirit is a splendid thing, a sign of a superior nature. But you are no longer a young man; you are a youngish middle aged man, and it is time you found out that these spiritual athletics do not lead to wisdom.

To know all is to despise all.

If I know this, I ought to be able to escape the stupider kinds of illusion. The absolute nature of things is independent of my senses (which are all I have to perceive with), and what I perceive is an image of my own psyche.

Wisdom may be rented...on the experience of other people, but we buy it at an inordinate price before we make it our own forever.

Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books.

Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit.

But when mother died, Caroline was twelve, and in that queer time between childhood and nubile girlhood, when some girls seem to be wise without experience, and perhaps more clear-headed then they will be again until after their menopause.

He gave me this advice one time: Never marry your childhood sweetheart, he said; the reasons that make you choose her will all turn into reasons why you should have rejected her.

If Heloise had been more clear-headed she'd have seen that Abelard was a frightful nerd in human relationships.

What would you do if you were me? said Solly. What would I do in your place? No, no; you'd do something fantastic and get farther into the soup. I want to know what you would do if you were intelligent but prudent. What would you do if you were me?

It is a bad thing to forsake the old ways, and what is once lost can never quite be recovered." (Briggs

The beginning and the end- the origin and the consummation- are always in the same place, always the same thing, truthfully speaking. This spiritual maxim is one of the foundational wisdoms of the entire Western world- the oneness of beginning and end means that everything is a circle, held together, complete as it is. The firmly bound nature of the circle of reality is nothing more or less than the adamantine, circular bond of Fate itself, holding everything together as it must be.

For every ill beneath the sun, There is some remedy, or none Should there be one, resolve to find it; If not, submit, and never mind it. -Ancient West County wise saw or saying

to know how tall a tree is I must fall from the top; that is, desire burns.

Is the Starwife a witch? asked Firgil. Is any wise female a witch? Just because they have been blessed by the Green and given strange and beautiful gifts, does not mean they use them for evil purposes.

You've had a good life, haven't you? Despite messing up royally when you were my age. GeeGee laughed. Yes, dear. I have. A very good life. Sometimes a hard one. Life is full of hard things, even when it isn't us who have as you put it, messed up royally. but when we walk with God, life is always good, because He is.

Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.

Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for....

Friends you will have need of, for in you two worlds meet. There is no one on both sides with you, so you must learn to take your own counsel; and not to fear what is strange, if you know it also to be true.

One of the things she'd learnt on her own, ragged, bemused, zigzag way was that the best sources of useful information were often in strange places...

She was surprised into looking into the Beast's face. The contrasts she found there were too great: wisdom and despair, power and weakness, man and animal. These made him far more terrible than any hungry lion, any half-tamed hydra, any angry sorcerer, terrible as something that should not exist is terrible, because to recognise that it does exist shakes that faith in the foundations of the natural world which human beings must have to bear the burden of their rationality.

But the worst borne is not necessarily past and over with thereby. The worst of fighting a dragon is being caught in its fire, but you do not survive dragon encounters by commanding your muscles to withstand dragon fire, because you and they cannot. You survive by avoiding being burnt.

Their ignorance is so great they are terrified by a hint of the truth; a hint such as you are in yourself.

Let us not gallop to meet future difficulties," said Robin. "A walking pace is enough.