Quotes About Wisdom

Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

This direct perception, this simple and steady looking-upon a thing, is intuition; not any mystic process, but the most direct examination possible to the human mind.

To his alert mind and ears, every experience was education.

he loved wisdom too much to be a "successful" man.

All that remained was the scientific specialist, who knew more and more about less and less, and the philosophical speculator, who knew less and less about more and more. The specialist put on blinders in order to shut out from his vision all the world but one little spot, to which he glued his nose. Perspective was lost. Facts replaced understanding; and knowledge, split into a thousand isolated fragments, no longer generated wisdom. Every science, and every branch of philosophy, developed

The defect of democracy is its tendency to put mediocrity into power; and there is no way of avoiding this except by limiting office to men of "trained skill."138 Numbers by themselves cannot produce wisdom, and may give the best favors of office to the grossest flatterers.

Life is that which can hold a purpose for three thousand years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood and seed the wisdom of generations. The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageable, goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, longing.

The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding"5

Philosophy directs us first to seek the goods of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied, or not much wanted.

says a fine Greek adage, "is the gift of nature; but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom.")

For as no perfect view of a country can be taken from a flat; so it is impossible to discover the remote and deep parts of any science by standing upon the level of the same science, or without ascending to a higher.

Only a philosopher can be happy in marriage, and philosophers do not marry.

He had the philosopher's disease of seeing so far ahead that all the little pleasant shapes and colors of existence passed under his nose unseen.

To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar . . . . 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.

I was only 44, which is childhood philosophy.

And then, again, the more distinctly a man knows—the more intelligent he is—the more pain he has; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.

In philosophy all truth is old and only error is original.

only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.

Reason is man's imitation of divinity.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind," Bacon admonishes us, "and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt."2 Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.

Laplace is reported to have said on his deathbed that science was mere trifling, and that nothing was real but love.

It was even a saying among the philosophers themselves that since learned men had appeared, honest men were nowhere to be found.

It would be better to abandon our overrapid development of the intellect, and to aim rather at training the heart and the affections

Education does not make a man good; it only makes him clever—usually for mischief. Instinct and feeling are more trustworthy than reason.