Quotes About Wisdom

Ruso, perched on the edge of Gnostus's operating table, looked the stringy youth up and down and wondered if young men were getting stupider or whether he had been just as much of a fool at that age.

The passionate love of a mature woman.

let's all be reminded that no matter what our age, we're all growing older! We're racing toward those later years and the finish line that follows — so why not learn to run that race with grace and joy?

Old Jiko is supercareful with her time. She does everything really really slowly, even when she's just sitting on the veranda, looking out at the dragonflies spinning lazily around the garden pond. She says that she does everything really really slowly in order to spread time out so that she'll have more of it and live longer, and then she laughs so that you know she is telling you a joke.

Spinoza writes, "A free man, that is to say, a man who lives according to the dictates of reason alone, is not led by fear of death, but directly desires the good, that is to say, desires to act, and to preserve his being in accordance with the principle of seeking his own profit. He thinks, therefore, of nothing less than death, and his wisdom is a meditation upon life.

A free man, that is to say, a man who lives according to the dictates of reason alone, is not led by fear of death, but directly desires the good, that is to say, desires to act, and to preserve his being in accordance with the principle of seeking his own profit. He thinks, therefore, of nothing less than death, and his wisdom is a meditation upon life.

Where do you think poems come from? Everything speaks, young schoolboy! But it is only poets and prophets, saints and philosophers who hef ze ears to hear." "They hear voices?" "Of course! Socrates! And Joan of Arc! Rilke, Milton, Blake . . . !

Kannon, with her thousand arms and eleven heads, who could hear the voices of things crying out. I said I could totally relate to that, and when she told us that Kannon was the Buddhist saint of compassion

As someone who has to teach for a living, I shouldn't be saying this, but the planet can do quite well without books.

Information is a lot like water; it's hard to hold on to, and hard to keep from leaking away.

Do you have to live to be a hundred to really grow up?

Everything in the universe is constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives. That's what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again. And just like that, you die.

If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance. So we cultivate the ignorance, go to great lengths to celebrate it, even.

I felt it wouldn't kill me to learn something before I died

She might be a hundred and four and say some pretty wack things, but my old Jiko is totally dependable.

He described it as a collaboration with time and place, whose outcome neither he nor any of his contemporaries would ever live to witness, but he was okay with not knowing, Patience was part of his nature, and he accepted his lot as a short-lived mammal, scurrying in and out amid the roots of the giants.

No era un poema. Era un único carácter. Cinco trazos. Sei. Ikiru. Vivir. Sujetando aún el pincel, nos miró a mi padre y a mí: —Por el momento —nos dijo a los dos—. Por ahora.

Perhaps you have heard the Zen motto that says, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears"?

gaté gaté, para gaté, parasam gaté, boji sowa ka . . . These words are actually in some ancient Indian language71 and not even Japanese, but Jiko told me they means something like this: gone gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awakened, hurray . . . I

That's the thing about Jiko, one of her superpowers, is that just by being in the same room with you, she can make you feel okay about yourself.

When I wash my feet May all sentient beings Attain the power of supernatural feet With no hindrance to their practice.   Of

Never be afraid of not knowing, young man. Not knowing is ze practice of poets and sages.

I'd rather be a fool than hard-hearted.

We're in a transient state - why hate our present selves? Let's save the energy for when we are eighty, when we are perhaps above, or beyond, changing. Then we can hate, if hate we must.