Quotes About Wisdom

If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.

Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. Neither do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of the voyager.

Build slow and sure; 'tis for life, young man. In the elder days of art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the gods see everywhere. — Longfellow.

Lo que importa no es tanto lo que haces con tus manos como lo que haces con tu mente. Todo lo que se ha logrado por la mano o el cerebro del hombre, nació en la mente.

So far as is known, it said, no bird ever tried to build more nests than its neighbor. No fox ever fretted because he had only one hole in which to hide. No squirrel ever died of anxiety lest he should not lay by enough nuts for two winters instead of for one, and no dog ever lost any sleep over the fact that he did not have enough bones laid aside for his declining years.

Knowledge, then, is one of the secret keys which unlock the hidden mysteries of a successful life.

To-morrow! it is a period nowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchance in the fool's calendar. Wisdom

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, says Mary Wortley Montagu; nor any pleasure so lasting. Good books elevate the character, purify the taste, take the attractiveness out of low pleasures, and lift us upon a higher plane of thinking and living. It is not easy to be mean directly after reading a noble and inspiring book. The conversation of a man who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by his reading; but it will not be about his reading.

Time is money. We should not be stingy or mean with it, but we should not throw away an hour any more than we would throw away a dollar-bill. Waste of time means waste of energy, waste of vitality, waste of character in dissipation. It means the waste of opportunities which will never come back. Beware how you kill time, for all your future lives in it.

No two things differ more than Hurry and Dispatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, Dispatch of a strong one.

Epictetus, the pagan philosopher, proved in his life the truth of his own words — A man can be happy without wealth, without family, without office or honor, without health, without anything that the world seeks after.

The man who is mentally expanding, who is constantly growing larger and becoming broader, fuller, completer, does not age nearly as rapidly as the man who has ceased to grow.

Who is the richest of men? asked Socrates. He who is content with the least, for contentment is nature's riches.

This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, says Trollope, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures that God has prepared for His creatures. Other pleasures may be more ecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, in which there is no alloy.

We try to grasp too much of life at once; since we think of it as a whole, instead of living one day at a time. Life is a mosaic, and each tiny piece must be cut and set with skill, first one piece, then another.

It [seed of doubt] made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise. (Ender's Game, page 111)

Old age is the only disease you dont want to be cured of.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

Madness, and then illumination.

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?

the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

Quim, she said, don't ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there, and you've seen nothing but a map.