Quotes About Wisdom

Humility is the only lens though which great things can be seen--and once we have seen them, humility is the only posture possible.

We need a coat with two pockets. In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

it is so inevitable that men will be fools that it is only by another shift of folly that one might not be

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Remember what your grandfather said about the earth's being round at school and flat at home. He was a wise man and taught you what you need to know in Burma. It is the same in politics. Learn the arguments for socialism in the textbooks parrot them pass your exams. Never never argue. But keep within your own head and heart what you and everyone really knows that in the real world it is a system of incompetence and corruption and a project for ruining the country.

we quite unselfconsciously assumed we were the measure of all things. That was how we approached them. And suddenly I saw not only that we weren't the measure of all things, but that there was no measure.

you should go tho the past, looking not for messages or warnings, but simply to be humbled by the weight of human experience that has preceded the brief flicker of your own few days.

Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.

A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.

One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.

Hurt is a great teacher, maybe the greatest of all.

Because we're human. Like everyone else. And the older we get, the more human we get. The more human we get, the more painful everything becomes.

Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next ten years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.

The body's a funny thing. It's so full of surprises that it makes conventional wisdom seem silly.

I mourn for the quicksilvery racehorse passage of time. Its swiftness has caught me with the same ineffable start that comes to every man and woman who lives long enough. It remains as the single great surprise of any life. In

She had a grocer's faith in books; they can be handed out like Green Stamps and were redeemable for a variety of useful gifts.

Because our nation is stupid and Hollywood is coarse, there is no one to tell us of the deep and extraordinary beauty of older women. I now see them all around me and am filled with a fierce joy that one of them has come to live in my house.

Read the great books, gentlemen," Mr. Monte said one day. "Just the great ones. Ignore the others. There's not enough time.

I take account of my life and find that I have lived a lot and learned very little.

Young girls have an infinite capacity for being attracted to the wrong sort of men.

I never seemed to learn from joy; I earned my portion of wisdom through sadness.

It's politics . . . It makes everybody stupid. When you grow up, you'll know what I mean.

The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life.