Quotes About Wisdom

In high school, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a bunch of us spent a whole year reading Cicero—De Senectute, on old age; De Amicitia, on friendship. De Senectute, with all its resigned wisdom, I will probably never be capable of living up to or imitating. But De Amicitia I could make a stab at, and could have any time in the last thirty-four years.

The inconceivable idea of the sun.You must become an ignorant man againAnd see the sun again with an ignorant eyeAnd see it clearly in the idea of it.

And one trembles to be so understood and, at last,To understand, as if to know becameThe fatality of seeing things too well.

They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.

To be young is all there is in the world. They talk so beautifully about work and having a family and a home (and I do, too, sometimes) --but it's all worry and head-aches and respectable poverty and forced gushing. Telling people how nice it is, when, in reality, you would give all of your last thirty years for one of your first thirty. Old people are tremendous frauds.

One must have a mind of winter.

If there must be a god in the house, must be, Saying things in the rooms and on the stair, Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor, Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

Perhaps, The man-hero is not the exceptional monster, But he that of repetition is most master.

Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.

You must become an ignorant man again And see the sun again with an ignorant eye And see it clearly in the idea of it.

And for what, except for you, do I feel love? Do I press the extremest book of the wisest man Close to me, hidden in me day and night? In the uncertain light of single, certain truth, Equal in living changingness to the light In which I meet you, in which we sit at rest, For a moment in the central of our being, The vivid transparence that you bring is peace.

Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.

According to Plato, the wise man is the best ruler precisely because he doesn't care unduly about political honor and power, much less about bodily pleasures. He is too absorbed in the pleasures of learning to be tempted by the lesser pleasures of glory, wealth, and hedonism. His rule is therefore benevolent and unmarred by self-interest, because the passions which in lesser men would be absorbed in material goods and sensual pleasures are sluiced off into the pleasures of the mind. The

Life is just a mirror, and what you see out there, you must first see inside of you.

Truth needs no label: it is neither Buddhist, Christian, Hindu nor Muslim. It is not the monopoly of anybody. Sectarian labels are a hindrance to the independent understanding of Truth, and they produce harmful prejudices in people's minds.

When the secret is discovered, when the Truth is seen, all the forces which feverishly produce the continuity of samsara in illusion become calm and incapable of producing any more karma-formations, because there is no more illusion, no more 'thirst' for continuity. It is like mental disease which is cured when he cause or the secret of the malady is discovered and seen by the patients.

The root of all evil is ignorance (avijj?) and false views (micch?di??hi). It is an undeniable fact that as long as there is doubt, perplexity, wavering, no progress is possible.

Human qualities and emotions like love, charity, compassion, tolerance, patience, friendship, desire, hatred, ill-will, ignorance, conceit, etc., need no sectarian labels; they belong to no particular religion.

Being impatient or angry at suffering does not remove it. On the contrary, it adds a little more to one's troubles, and aggravates and exacerbates a situation already disagreeable. What is necessary is … the understanding of the question of suffering, how it comes about, and how to get rid of it[.]

You may see the light, but the light is not the result of your eyesight.

It is always seeing through knowledge or wisdom (ñ??a-dassana), and not believing through faith.

According to the Buddha, there are four ways of treating questions: (1) Some should be answered directly; (2) others should be answered by way of analysing them; (3) yet others should be answered by counter-questions; (4) and lastly, there are questions which should be put aside.

According to the Buddha, there are four ways of treating questions: (1) Some should be answered directly; (2) others should be answered by way of analysing them; (3) yet others should be answered by counter-questions; (4) and lastly, there are questions which should be put aside.1

To be attached to one thing (to a certain view) and to look down upon other things (views) as inferior—this the wise men call a fetter.'2