Quotes About Wisdom

I thought the definition of an educated person was one who at least knows what's in the great books he or she hasn't read" (p. 169).

Simple questions--and simple answers--were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.

And the difference was this, she mused: those who are twenty don't know what it is like to be forty, whereas those who are forty know what it is like to be twenty. It was a bit like discussing a foreign country with somebody who has never been there. They are prepared to listen, but it's not quite real for them.

Although she was not a great reader, Mma Potokwane was a firm believer in the power of the book. The more books that Botswana had, in her view, the better. It would be on books that the future would be based; books and the people who knew how to use them.

Yes, wisdom: that was something that came to everybody, although it came in varying quantities and at different times.

You do not have to read a book to understand how the world works. You just have to keep your eyes open.

A dog sees no point in dwelling on things that have happened; the important thing is that they are not happening now. In that respect, they have something to teach us: we so often feel that then is now, and this leads us to prolong the suffering of yesterday into the suffering of today. Dogs do not do that.

People were forever digging up events that had taken place a long time ago. And what was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present? There were many wrongs in the past, but did it help to keep bringing them up and giving them a fresh airing?

There are some people who start off knowing very little about the world and end up years later knowing even less. Never underestimate the capacity of the human mind for ignorance." Mr. Woodhouse found this very amusing.

She was, in fact, often wrong--and knew it. Life became difficult when those who were often wrong did not know it.

We do not talk about wise men or wise ladies any more, she reflected; their place had been taken, it seemed, by all sorts of shallow people—actors and the like—who were only too ready to pronounce on all sorts of subjects.

Es ist ein Zeichen geistiger Reife, seine Meinung zu ändern, wenn man merkt, dass man im Unrecht ist.

There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.

A dog sees no point in dwelling on things that have happened; the important thing is that they are not happening now. In that respect, they have something to teach us: we so often feel that then is now, and this leads us to prolong the suffering of yesterday into the suffering of today. Dogs do not do that. With

Never try to reach a conclusion before you reach the conclusion.

wise men are remembered, they always are.

You're not angry, Mma?" She shook her head. What was the point of anger? There were occasions when Mma Ramotswe, like all of us, could feel angry, but they were few—and they never lasted long. Anger, Obed Ramotswe had explained to her once, is no more than a salt that we rub into our wounds. She had never forgotten that—along with the things he said about cattle, and Botswana, and the behaviour of the rains.

Mother was right, you know. It's an odd thing, isn't it: you never want your mother to be right, but the older you get, the more right you realise your mother was. All those things that mothers say, all those annoying things, turn out to be right.

A woman sees more than a man sees. That is well-known.

Everything was so clear-cut to the student mind; the truth was passionately proclaimed, rather than half-believed in, which was how more experienced people thought of things. The more experienced had generally discovered that there were no longer any privileged, exclusive truths – there were just the various shades of possibility.

We should all have a tree in our childhood...a tree one might explore, a tree from which one might learn how to fall.

usually better to seek the advice of a stranger—not just any stranger, of course, as one could hardly go out onto the street and confide in the first person one encountered, but a stranger whom you knew to be wise.

The more you listen, the more you learn.

If she had listened to her father, if she had listened to the cousin's husband, she would never have married Note and the years of unhappiness would never have occurred. But they did, because she was headstrong, as everyone is at the age of twenty, and when we simply cannot see, however much we may think we can . The world is full of twenty-year-olds, she thought, all of them blind.