Quotes About Wisdom

Prudent men are wont to say--and this not rashly or without good ground--that he who would foresee what has to be should reflect on what has been, for everything that happens in the world at any time has genuine resemblance to what happened in ancient times. -- Machiavelli

It is of the greatest important in this world that a man should know himself, and the measure of his own strength and means; and he who knows that he has not a genius for fighting must learn how to govern by the arts of peace.

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

Only a fool is not afraid.

I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.

Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about, Charles Wallace said. Why should I disillusion them?

Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.

It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.

I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, This is what I believe. Finished. What I believe is alive ... and open to growth

We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature.

The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.

Truth is eternal. Knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them.

you and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.

It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fact, that we touch the hem of truth.

God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.

Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!

Aeschylus writes, In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

La experiencia es la madre de la ciencia. Spanish, my dears. Cervantes. Experience is the mother of knowledge.

But if I knew everything, there would be no wonder, because what I believe in is far more than I know.

The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.

We know you have a great mind and all, Mother, but you don't have much sense.