Quotes About Wisdom

If I had to create a god, I would lend him a "slow understanding": a kind of drip-by-drip understanding of problems. People who understand quickly frighten me.

What right does my present have to speak of my past? Has my present some advantage over my past? What grace might have enlightened me? except that of passing time, or of a good cause, encountered on my way?

Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision.

Amour au bandeau: Ce proverbe est faux. L'amour ouvre grand les yeux, il rend clairvoyant:J'ai, de toi, sur toi, le savoir absolu. Rapport du clerc au maître; tu as tout pouvoir sur moi, mais j'ai tout savoir sur toi.

Washington must have seen that Hamilton, for all his brains and daring, sometimes lacked judgment and had to be supervised carefully.

Light reading (by this, I mean books of little importance) may amuse for the moment, but leaves nothing solid behind.

Washington presented a rare case of a revolutionary leader who, instead of being blinded by political fervor, recognized that fallible human beings couldn't always live up to the high standards he set for them.

Washington dwelt upon the transcendent importance of education underscores the stigma that he felt about having missed college. As president, he lectured a young relative about to enter college that "every hour misspent is lost forever" and that "future years cannot compensate for lost days at this period of your life.

His subordinates remembered him as tough but fair-minded. Years later, one of them retained Hamilton as a lawyer, even though he had become a vocal political enemy. When Hamilton questioned the wisdom of this, the ex-soldier replied, "I served in your company during the war and I know you will do me justice in spite of my rudeness.

As president, he lectured a young relative about to enter college that "every hour misspent is lost forever" and that "future years cannot compensate for lost days at this period of your life.

While reading the scene in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy in which the tenderhearted Uncle Toby picks up a fly and delicately places it outside a window instead of killing it, Burr is said to have remarked, "Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me.

He believed there was a time to think and then a time to act.

Having twice been sued by people for offering incorrect market advice, he refrained from offering stock tips.

a general marches at the head of his troops," so should wise politicians "march at the head of affairs, insomuch that they ought not to wait the event to know what measures to take, but the measures which they have taken ought to produce the event.

Never an intellectual who relished ideas for their own sake, he mined books for practical wisdom and delighted in dredging up handy aphorisms.

I bore it in silence. It does no good to dispute with such a man.

He seemed to age a generation.

Washington was taciturn, once advising his adopted grandson, "It is best to be silent, for there is nothing more certain than that it is at all times more easy to make enemies than friends.

As his body aged, his mind grew younger and more buoyant.

Her hardships tapped some deep reserve of strength and wisdom in the simple country woman

he "taught men how to use money and how not to be its slave.

George Washington was always the maestro of eloquent silences.

No business experience was ever wasted upon Rockefeller.

We will let it simmer" was a saying John employed throughout his business career.