Quotes About Wisdom

It doesn't do to look too hard into this mystery, which is as far from being simple as it is from being safe. We don't know enough about ourselves. I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are so lost.

We're getting old, he thought, and it damn sure didn't take long.

Years ago, when he was around fourteen, he'd been all hipped on the idea of going to India. He read books about people sitting on rocks, naked, in all kinds of weather, but mostly bad, naturally, and walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at wisdom. I used to say that it sounded to me as though they were getting away from wisdom as fast as they could. I think he sort of looked down on me for that.

You face reality, not the lights. The lights go off as quickly as they come on.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at last, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others. One can only face in others what one can face in oneself. On this confrontation depends the measure of our wisdom and compassion. This energy is all that one finds in the rubble of vanished civilizations, and the only hope for ours.

One must be careful not to take refuge in any delusion.

Somebody , said Jacques, your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love.

My progress report concerning my journey to the palace of wisdom is discouraging. I lack certain indispensable aptitudes. Furthermore, it appears that I packed the wrong things.

To accept one's past—one's history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.

It doesn't do to look too hard into this mystery, which is as far from being simple as it is from being safe. We don't know enough about ourselves. I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are so lost.

The effort not to know what one knows is the most corrupting effort one can make—

We don't know enough about ourselves. I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people, especially most white people, are so lost.

Take no one's word for anything, including mine—but trust your experience.

Non serve cercar di andare troppo a fondo in questo mistero che è tanto poco semplice quanto poco innocuo. Non sappiamo abbastanza di noi stessi. Credo sia meglio esser consci di non saperne niente, così si può crescere con il mistero e intanto il mistero cresce in te. Ma la giorno d'oggi, naturalmente, tutti sanno tutto ed è per questo che tanta gente si perde.

Take no one's word for anything, including mine—but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.

Take no one's word for anything, including mine—but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there really is no limit to where you can go.

I smiled. 'Things my father never told me.' 'Somebody,' said Jacques, 'your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour—and in the oddest places!—for the lack of it.' And then: 'Here comes your baby. Sois sage. Sois chic.

doesn't do to look too hard into this mystery, which is as far from being simple as it is from being safe. We don't know enough about ourselves. I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are so lost.

But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are lost.

large part of her simplicity consisted in determining not to want what she could not have with ease. So

To accept one's past-- one's history--is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.

To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced. As for one's wits, it is just not true that one can live by them – not, that is, if one wishes really to live.

You are - how old? Twenty-six or seven? I am nearly twice that and, let me tell you, you are lucky. You are lucky that what is happening to you now is happening now and not when you are forty, or something like that, when there would be no hope for you and you would simply be destroyed.

I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are so lost.