Quotes About Wisdom

Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

A good teacher teaches what he has been taught. A wise one teaches what he has learned.

I saw with open eyes Singing birds sweet Sold in the shops For people to eat, Sold in the shops of Stupidity Street. I saw in vision The worm in the wheat, And in the shops nothing For people to eat; Nothing for sale in Stupidity Street.

Clever lines routinely travel from obscure mouths to prominent ones.

shun rash judgment. Even if you should see your neighbor doing what is wrong, refuse to pass judgment on him, excuse him instead. Excuse his intention even if you cannot excuse his act, which may be the fruit of ignorance or surprise or chance.27

As John of the Cross points out with devastating accuracy and precision, the disorders in our heart, unless they are healed and purified by the action of the one true God, will leave us enslaved to our passions and unable to think clearly, decide wisely, and live in a way worthy of our dignity as bearers of the image of God.

You will please him more readily if you live within the limits proper to you, and do not set your sights at things beyond you (Sir. 3:22).

When you have got a new idea, read Aristotle to find out what's wrong with it.

The young see things in black and white while the favorite adverb of the aged is "perhaps.

Mad Thomist's Syllogism: All wisdom is in the mind of the Angelic Doctor. I know the mind of the Angelic Doctor.

But I knew a lot more than that; I knew exactly what sort of man he was in his old age, so it wasn't hard to guess what he must have been like as a young man--for a man's character doesn't change after he's thirty. It only becomes more firmly set, and is more deeply marked in his features.

Betcha my life! But you got lots o' years to learn em' in. Don't go rarin' at ' em like as if tomorrow'd be the day o' jedgment!

Your best teacher is your last mistake.

Lee was tough as hickory, but the tree was old.

I always had the idea that when I was older I'd get frightfully clever. I'd get awfully learned, I'd get jolly sage. People would come to me for advice. But nobody comes to me for anything, and I don't know a bloody thing.

God would not allow Adam and Eve to eat of the forbidden tree, even though it was good for food, pleasant to the eye and to be desired to make one wise (Gen. 3).

To maintain an opinion because it is thine, and not because it is true, is to prefer thyself above the truth.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him.

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than material force, that thoughts rule the world.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.