Quotes About Wisdom

No siempre se saca el bien de las buenas obras ni el mal de las malas obras. Ni siquiera los sabios y los buenos pueden ver la finalidad de todas sus acciones.

beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.

I knew then, and know now, virtually nothing

And as much as I'd like to believe there's a truth beyond illusion, I've come to believe that there's no truth beyond illusion.

It does not to do be frightened of things about which you know nothing,' he said. 'You are like children. Afraid of the dark.

A sententious and vulgar statement, certainly, but like many such gnomic vulgarities, it also contains a tiny splinter of truth.

Unfortunately, the feelings arrive before you're old enough to handle them.

Because you're a creation of God, you reflect the Divine qualities of creativity, wisdom, and love.

I do not like hardness of heart, but neither do I like softness of head.

Lincoln revealed early on a quality that would characterize his leadership for the rest of his life—a willingness to acknowledge errors and learn from his mistakes.

My reading was always a kind of living," he explained later, "a longing to know some man or men stronger, braver, wiser, wittier, more amusing, or more desperately wicked, than I was, whom I could come to know well and sometimes be friends with.

No man resolved to make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite." Frank

I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,'

For political leaders in a democracy are not revolutionaries or leaders of creative thought. The best of them are those who respond wisely to changes and movements already under way. The worst, the least successful, are those who respond badly or not at all, and those who misunderstand the direction of already visible change.

Yet, however dissimilar their upbringings, books became for both Lincoln and Roosevelt "the greatest of companions." Every day for the rest of their lives, both men set aside time for reading, snatching moments while waiting for meals, between visitors, or lying in bed before sleep.

Still, Roosevelt noted, it was "not always easy to strike the just middle," and he inevitably made mistakes.

The more you read about a subject, he advised me, the more interesting it will seem.

A finely developed sense of timing—knowing when to wait and when to act—would remain in Lincoln's repertoire of leadership skills the rest of his life.

With kindness, playfulness, wit, and wisdom, he would explain "things hard for us to understand by stories—maxims—tales and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or idea by some story that was plain and near as that we might instantly see the force & bearing of what he said." He understood early on that concrete examples and stories provided the best vehicles for teaching.

we should look beyond our noses;

Life had shown him that logic and step-by-step planning hardly controlled events.

What is well-spoken must be yoked to what is well-thought. And such thought is the product of great labor, "the drudgery of the law.

Time is the most valuable thing you have; be sure you spend it well

no one knew better than Lincoln that words have consequences. In a world of tinder, he was determined to hold his rhetorical gifts in abeyance in order to reach across factions and avoid a single spark that could set loose an avoidable conflagration.