Quotes About Wisdom

The hallway of every man's life is paced with pictures; pictures gay and pictures gloomy, all useful, for if we be wise, we can learn from them a richer and braver way to live.

Poverty makes you wise but it's a curse.

Wise people say nothing in dangerous times.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

I'm moving into that eldership age, you know? I'm at the 'wise woman' age where it's not about learning, but utilizing the information that I have in a way that serves other people. That's a high calling and it's a great responsibility.

Legislation can neither be wise nor just which seeks the welfare of a single interest at the expense and to the injury of many and varied interests.

A wise doctor does not mutter incantations over a sore that needs the knife.

He is good and wise who always speaks the truth, acts on the dictates of virtue, and tries to make others good and happy.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently.

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

'How do you know so much about everything?' was asked of a very wise and intelligent man; and the answer was 'By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions as to anything of which I was ignorant.'

Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains, rivers, plants and trees - should be your teacher.

Men become wise just as they become rich, more by what they save than by what they receive.

Since Socrates and Plato first speculated on the nature of the human mind, serious thinkers through the ages - from Aristotle to Descartes, from Aeschylus to Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman - have thought it wise to understand oneself and one's behavior.

Our lady the Common Law is a very wise old lady though she still has something to learn in telling what she knows.

The wise does at once what the fool does at last.

I'm not really wise. But I can be cranky.

Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but insofar as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious.

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

Be wise; soar not too high to fall; but stoop to rise.

The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty.

When we looked at the life cycle in our 40s, we looked to old people for wisdom. At 80, though, we look at other 80-year-olds to see who got wise and who not. Lots of old people don't get wise, but you don't get wise unless you age.