Quotes About Wisdom

Life is meant to form us in independence, usher us into an adulthood that begins in apprenticeship and ends in mastery, and then, those tasks accomplished, to bring us to the acme of integrity, of wisdom, of eldership in the community of the world. It is a process of ripening as we go, getting stronger, getting more caring, becoming more procreative, sharing more wisdom as we grow—so that those who come after us can walk a clearer path.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

I am only a cup that knowledge holds. It does not to knowledge matter how poor the cup is. It is the wisdom of those who drink of me that me wise makes. Fools make a sibyl foolish, wherever she is.

There's more to me, more to the universe, than I suspected. Room for all the dreams I ever had, and all the nightmares...heroes in the gutters and in the mirror; saints in the frozen wasteland; fools and liars on the throne of wisdom, and hands reaching out in hunger that will never be filled.

Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information is control.

When you grow as old as I am you can't any longer say this was someone's fault, and that was someone else's. It isn't so clear when you take a long view. Blame seems to lie everywhere. Or nowhere. Who can say where unhappiness begins?

Yesterday's gone, so has the day before. Don't let's waste today arguing about it.

Some of us are drawn to mountains the way the moon draws the tide. Both the great forests and the mountains live in my bones. They have taught me, humbled me, purified me and changed me.

This stuff of a past not worthily lived is also medicine.

Conceptual knowledge is so valued in our world. Yet in many cultures wisdom is equated not with knowledge but with an open heart. And

The secret of life," say the Utes, "is in the shadows and not in the open sun; to see anything at all, you must look deeply into the shadow of a living thing.

Iris Murdoch defined humility as a "selfless respect for reality.

Thomas Berry, in The Dream of the Earth,

It's only when ye're older that yer look back and think how stupid it was to be wishing yer life away.' Molly

Growing old is something no one can change. It happens to everyone, rich or poor. All the money in the world can't keep yer young. But it's the way yer grow old that makes the difference. Some people give up the ghost in their fifties and sixties, while others grow old gracefully. And

Life is not easy. We all have problems-even tragedies-to deal with, and luck has nothing to do with it. Bad luck is only the superstitious excuse for those who don't have the wit to deal with the problems of life.

When speaking to a Bear of Very Little Brain, remember that long words may bother him.

My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on.

Never floss with a stranger.

The only good thing about age is that sooner or later all of the SOBs who dumped you are going to die.

Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It's all funny.

During the last year she was alive, at age 95, my mother said many times, "It's so freeing to realize that nothing really matters." She said it joyously, with relief, as if a burden had been lifted. She also said over and over, "Love yourself". Tollifson, Joan. Nothing to Grasp (p. 174). New Harbinger Publications. Kindle Edition.

Once people start identifying themselves or others as "permanently enlightened people," the bullshit begins.

The trick is not to make an idea or a system out of this openness, a new dogma.