Quotes About Wisdom

The trick, it seems to me, is to stave off regret. That's what the whole thing is about. And we can't stave it off forever, because it is impossible not to make the mistakes that let regret in, but the best of us manage to limp on into our sixties or seventies before we succumb. Me, I made it to about thirty-seven, and David made it to the same age, and my brother gave up the ghost even before that. And I'm not sure that there is a cure for regret. I suspect not.

I can see everything once it's already happened--I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.

those places are reserved for the kind of humiliations are heartbreaks that you're just not capable of delivering. That probably sounds crueler than it is meant to, but the fact is that we're too old to make each other miserable, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing...

Sometimes Marcus sounded as though he were a hundred years old, and it broke Will's heart.

I can see everything once it's already happened—I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.

I remember the juvenile stuff, where you put your arm along the sofa and let it drop onto her shoulder, or press your leg against hers; I remember the mock-tough adult stuff I used to try when I was in my mid-twenties, where I looked someone in the eye and asked if they wanted to stay the night. But none of that seems appropriate anymore. What do you do when you're old enough to know better?

Tucker accepted completely that women were the fairer and wiser sex, but they were also irredeemably vicious when the occasion demanded.

I libri, ammettiamolo, sono meglio di qualunque altra cosa. Se organizzassimo un campionato di fantaboxe culturale, schierando sul ring i libri contro il meglio che qualunque altra forma d'arte abbia da offrire, sulla distanza di quindici riprese…be', i libri vincerebbero praticamente sempre.

I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains. I

Books are, let's face it better then everything else

You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in, in the hope that you might be lucky, and the knife has actually been staunching the blood. You want to know the conventional medical wisdom? The conventional medical wisdom is that you keep the knife in. Really.

and that there were many things grow-ups did which couldn't properly be judged by young people until the young people were grown-ups themselves...

If for us culture means museum and library and open house and art gallery, for them it meant the activities and amenities of everyday life... The rift is... between folk culture, where the unschooled can be wise, and print culture, which enslaved the other senses to the eye.

and that there were many things grown-ups did which couldn't properly be judged by young people until the young people were grown-ups themselves...

Genius, it is said, is the ability to see the obvious before anyone else.4

Knowledge is more virtue than power.

En general, los hombres juzgan más por los ojos que por la inteligencia, pues todos pueden ver, pero pocos comprenden lo que ven.

Aquel que en un principado no descubre los males sino una vez nacidos, no es verdaderamente sabio; pero ésta es virtud que tienen pocos

no he encontrado entre lo poco que poseo nada que me sea más caro o que tanto estime como el conocimiento de las acciones de los hombres

El príncipe prudente debe preferir rodearse de hombres de buen juicio a los que dará la libertad de decirle la verdad

Un príncipe que no es sabio no puede ser bien aconsejado y, por ende, no puede gobernar.

Hay tres clases de cerebros: el primero discierne por sí, el segundo entiende lo que los otros disciernen y el tercero no entiende ni discierne lo que los otros disciernen. El primero es excelente, el segundo bueno y el tercero inútil.

É defeito comum dos homens, não fazer contas na bonança com a tempestade

He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it.