Quotes About Wisdom

The surest poison is time.

Time is the author of authors.

Time is a stream which glides smoothly on and is past before we know.

As Spinoza, or someone very much like him, once said . . .

A lot of you want me to hurry through the introduction. That's because you're so much older you don't want to waste a minute of your life.

Even more exasperating than the guy who thinks he knows it all is the one who really does.

When I was preparing for this speech I asked my family for advice. One member replied, "There's a first time for everything, so try to be funny and brief."

Most experts suggest that one should open with a joke. Obviously, they've never heard me tell a joke.

Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.

It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage.

Men do with opportunities as children do at the seashore; they fill their little hands with sand, and then let the grains fall through, one by one, till all are gone.

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that are offered.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerves give to wisdom.

Timing, degree and conviction are the three wise men in this life.

There is nothing new under the sun.

The true exercise of freedom is-can-nily and wisely and with grace-to move inside what space confines-and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted.

None of us can be free of conflict and woe. Even the greatest men have had to accept disappointments as their daily bread. ... The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth.

We turn not older with years, but newer every day.

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

When you become 100, life changes completely.

I look forward to growing old and wise and audacious.