Quotes About Wisdom

Was kann gewaltiger sein als die Zerstörung aller Bücher?

The truth is unpalatable.

The sisters' acquaintance Madam Nell Kimball recalled the sage advice of her aunt Letty, a retired courtesan: "Every girl, if only she knew it, is sitting on her fortune.

novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest. If

The Sufis, the Sunni mystics with whom the Ismailis felt great affinity, had an axiom: "He who knows himself, knows his Lord.

But Enki wants to save Atrahasis,50 the 'exceedingly wise man' of the city of Shuruppak.

so Enki tells Atrahasis to build a boat, instructing him about

As soon as I stopped trying to exploit my literary skills to advance my career or enhance my reputation, I found that I was opening myself to the text, could lose myself to the beauty of the words and in the wisdom of the writer. It was a kind of ekstasis, an ecstasy that was not an exotic, tranced state of consciousness but, in the literal sense of the word, a going beyond self.

The texts emphasize that these ideas were not to be interpreted literally. They had nothing to do with ordinary logic or events in this world, but were merely symbols of a more elusive truth.

The sage acquired Wisdom by meditating on the marvels of the physical world, not by studying Torah.

Shu required that "all day and every day" we looked into our own hearts, discovered what caused us pain, and then refrained, under all circumstances, from inflicting that distress upon other people. It demanded that people no longer put themselves into a special, separate category but constantly related their own experience to that of others. Confucius was the first to promulgate the Golden Rule. For Confucius it had transcendent value.

Humiliate your enemy is dangerous.

if they did not interrogate their most fundamental beliefs, they would live superficial, expedient lives, because "the unexamined life is not worth living."7

Like any Platonist, he experienced knowledge as remembrance, as known to him already at some profound level of his being.

The silence in mysticism is alien. People want to do a few courses in mysticism, rather like the way you do French before going on holiday, and emerge a mystic. Mysticism isn't like that.

The philosopher Karl Popper (1902–94) often remarked "We don't know anything" and believed that this was the most important philosophical truth.16

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself to us as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of all true religiousness.

What do you think Socrates meant when he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living"? Third

Instead of engaging in uncharitable controversies, in which everybody insisted that he alone was right, a humble acknowledgement of our lack of insight should draw us together.

Si te consideras sabio, aseguraban, ¡puedes dar prácticamente por seguro que no lo eres!

He insisted that it was impossible to understand a single word of the Book of Nature without knowing the language of mathematics.

the anonymous Chinese author we know as Laozi pointed out that no matter how good his intentions, violence always recoils upon the perpetrator.

The good leader in war is not warlike The good fighter is not impetuous; The best conqueror of the enemy is he who never takes the offensive. The man who gets the most out of men is the one who treats them with humility.3 Tyrants

true insight does not consist of the acquisition of information but comes from mastering our egotism and greed.5