Quotes About Wisdom

Sometimes old people have really old-fashioned ideas, but that doesn't mean I have to go along with them. I need my grandparents, but in a certain sense they need me too.

Sometimes old people have really old-fashioned ideas, but that doesn't mean I have to go along with them.

Usually, when I want to know something, I find it in some book or other, don't you?

When I think back to my life in 1942, it all seems so unreal. The Anne Frank who enjoyed that heavenly existence was completely different from the one who has grown wise within these walls.

Little children such as Anne must never, under any circumstances, know better than the grownups, however many blunders they make.

I'm surprised at my childish innocence. Deep down I know I could never be that innocent again, however much I'd like to be.

It seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl

Man lernt die Menschen erst gut kennen, wenn man einmal richtigen Streit mit ihnen gehabt hat. Erst dann kann man ihren Charakter beurteilen. (S.58)

En wat heeft het voor zin van het Achterhuis een melancholiek Achterhuis te maken?

I've gained some insight into human nature since I came here, which is good, but I've had enough for the present.

I am all the ages I've ever been.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.

Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware.

Most people's intuitions are drowned out by folk sayings. We have a moment of real feeling or insight, and then we come up with a folk saying that captures the insight in a kind of wash. The intuition may be real and ripe, fresh with possibilities, but the folk saying is guaranteed to be a cliche, stale and self-contained.

Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it.

As far as I can recall, none of the adults in my life ever once remembered to say, "Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams. However, you're not going to feel that a lot in seventh grade. Just hang on.

Periods in the wilderness or desert were not lost time. You might find life, wildflowers, fossils, sources of water. I wish there were shortcuts to wisdom and self-knowledge: cuter abysses or three-day spa wilderness experiences. Sadly, it doesn't work that way. I so resent this.

I know nothing, except what everyone knows--if there when grace dances, I should dance.

Life does not seem to present itself to me for my convenience, to box itself up nicely so I can write about it with wisdom and a point to make before putting it on a shelf somewhere.

I kept my expectations low, which is one of the secrets of life.

My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome inside the 8-Ball, every age we've ever been is who we are.

Are you willing to see what you are seeing, and to know what you know?

Mark Twain said that Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before.