Quotes About Wisdom

At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out.

I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun.

I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific.

Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?

Thoughts are divine.

She read everything.

I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk.

There are some books that LIVE, she mused. They are young with us, and they grow old with us.

The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

the value of education is among the greatest of all human values...

One wanted fifty pairs of eyes to see with, she reflected. Fifty pairs of eyes were not enough to get round that one woman with, she thought.

Ah well, so be it. The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent's Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained — at last! — the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence — the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.

This late age of the world's experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears.

Nothing need be said; nothing could be said.

It won't seem to you nonsense in ten years' time,' said Mrs. Hilbery. 'Believe me, Katharine, you'll look back on this these days afterwards; you'll remember all the silly things you've said; and you'll find that your life has been built on them. The best of life is built on what we say when we're in love. It isn't nonsense Katherine,' she urged, 'it's the truth, it's the only truth.

Punctuality is one of the minor virtues which we do not acquire until later in life.

I was thinking between 3 and 4 this morning, of my 55 years. I lay awake so calm, so content, as if I'd stepped off the whirling world into a deep blue quiet space and there open eyed existed, beyond harm; armed against all that can happen.

Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact.

The common fund of experience is very deep.

I am growing up. I am losing some illusions, perhaps to acquire others.

The compensation of growing old...was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained - at last! - the power which adds the supreme flavor to existence, - the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.

to be engaged to marry some one with whom you are not in love is an inevitable step in a world where the existence of passion is only a traveler's story brought from the heart of deep forests and told so rarely that wise people doubt whether the story can be true.