Quotes About Wisdom

When a simpleton abused him, Buddha listened in silence; but when the man had finished, Buddha asked him: "Son, if a man declined to accept a present made to him, to whom would it belong?" The man answered: "To him who offered it." "My son," said Buddha, "I decline to accept your abuse, and request you to keep it for yourself

Democritus (460-360 B.C.)— in reality there is nothing but atoms and space.

Sensation is unorganized stimulus, perception is organized sensation, conception is organized perception, science is organized knowledge, wisdom is organized life: each is a greater degree of order, and sequence, and unity.

A sense of humor, being born of perspective, bears a near kinship to philosophy; each is the soul of the other.

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew…

The first lesson that the sages of the Upanishads teach their selected pupils is the inadequacy of the intellect. How can this feeble brain, that aches at a little calculus, ever hope to understand the complex immensity of which it is so transitory a fragment?

Let us trust to ourselves, see all with our own eyes; Let these be our oracles, our tripods and our gods.

versions of Hippocrates' Prognostics, Galen On Foods, and

To be great is not to be placed above humanity, ruling others; but to stand above the partialities and futilities of uninformed desire, and to rule one's self.

Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.

The harmony of the part with the whole may be the best definition of health, beauty, truth, wisdom, morality, and happiness. This

The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.

To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm: That is the top of sovereignty.

Silence is the beginning of wisdom.

passion without reason is blind, reason without passion is dead.

To be a philosopher," said Thoreau, "is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Prudens quæstio dimidium scientiæ—to know what to ask is already to know half.

Read the book not all at once, but in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider that you have but begun to understand it. Read then some commentary, like Pollock's Spinoza, or Martineau's Study of Spinoza; or, better, both. Finally, read the Ethics again; it will be a new book to you. When you have finished it a second time you will remain forever a lover of philosophy.

In books "we converse with the wise, as in action with fools." That is, if we know how to select our books. "Some books are to be tasted," reads a famous passage, "others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested"; all these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned.

Make wisdom human to the adolescent mind.

There is no humorist like history.

Apparently beauty is born in suffering, and wisdom is the child of grief.

Not as adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world—knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at—well; if not—well also; though not so well.

Youth is the age of extremes: "if the young commit a fault it is always on the side of excess and exaggeration." The great difficulty of youth (and of many of youth's elders) is to get out of one extreme without falling into its opposite.