Quotes About Wisdom

I have somewhere read of a wise bishop who in a visit to his diocese found an old woman whose only prayer consisted in the single interjection Oh!- Good mother said he to her, continue to pray in this manner; your prayer is better than ours. This better prayer is mine also.

Alas, it is when we are beginning to leave this mortal body that it most offends us!

The wise man observes the public disorder he cannot prevent; he observes it, and reveals by his sad countenance the grief it causes him; but as for individual disorders, he opposes them or averts his eyes, lest his presence be taken for approval.

All our wisdom consists in servile prejudices. All our practices are only subjection, impediment, and constraint. Civil man is born, lives, and dies in slavery. At his birth he is sewed in swaddling clothes; at his death he is nailed in a coffin. So long as he keeps his human shape, he is enchained by our institutions.

The truth brings no man a fortune

Ah,' thought the king sadly, shrugging his shoulders, I see clearly that if one has a crazy wife, one cannot avoid being a fool.' (Queen Fantasque)

The good man can be proud of his virtue because it is his. But of what is the intelligent man proud?

But if the abberations of foolish youth made me forget suc wise lessons for a time,I have the happiness to sense at last that whatever the inclination one may have toward vice,it is difficult for an education in which the heart is involved to remain forever lost.

Since nothing is less stable among men than those external relationships which chance brings about more often than wisdom, and which are called weakness or power, wealth or poverty, human establishments appear at first glance to be based on piles of shifting sand.

One always wants what is good for oneself, but one does not always see it. The people is never corrupted, but it is often fooled, and only then does it appear to want what is bad.

No sé muy bien qué clase de jerga científica, más despreciable aún que la ignorancia, había usurpado el nombre a la sabiduría y para impedir su vuelta le ponía obstáculos casi insalvables. Se

There is, I feel, an age at which an individual man would want to stop. You will seek the age at which you would want your species to have stopped. Dissatisfied with your present state for reasons that portend even greater grounds for dissatisfaction for your unhappy posterity, perhaps you would like to be able to go backwards in time.

De manera que, poniéndome en el lugar del oráculo y preguntándome qué es lo que preferiría ser, lo que soy yo o lo que son ellos, saber lo que ellos han aprendido o saber que no sé nada, me he respondido a mí mismo y al Dios: Quiero seguir siendo lo que soy.

aunque estas personas no sepan nada, todas creen saber algo. Mientras que yo, si no sé nada, al menos no tengo esa duda. De

De manera que toda esta superioridad de sabiduría que me otorga el oráculo se reduce únicamente a estar convencido completamente de que ignoro todo lo que no sé.

He aquí cómo el lujo, la disolución y la esclavitud han sido en todo tiempo el castigo a los esfuerzos orgullosos que hemos hecho para salir de la feliz ignorancia donde nos había situado la sabiduría eterna. El

Los hombres son perversos; serían peores aún si hubieran tenido la desgracia de nacer sabiendo.

The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know, without asking what a child is capable of learning. They are always looking for the man in the child, without considering what he is before he becomes a man.

Fakat aram?zda ÅŸu ayr?m var ki bu adamlar bir ÅŸey bilmedikleri halde her ÅŸeyi bildiklerini san?yorlar; bense bir ÅŸey bilmemekle beraber hiç olmazsa bilmediÄŸimden ÅŸüphe etmiyorum.

Aprovechemos el contento de espíritu cuando acude. Guardémonos de alejarlo por nuestra culpa, pero no hagamos proyectos para encadenarlo, pues que tales proyectos son puras locuras.

Das einzige Mittel, den Irrtum zu vermeiden, ist die Unwissenheit.

The sophism that ruined me is the one made by the majority of men, who complain about lacking strength when it is already too late to make use of it. [...] Virtue costs us only through our own fault, and if we always wanted to be wise, we would rarely need to be virtuous. But inclinations that would be easy to overcome sweep us away without resistance: we give way to slight temptations whose danger we scorn

Respetad a la infancia y no os deis prisa en juzgarla ni para el bien ni para el mal. Dejad

Wise men, if they try to speak their language to the common herd instead of its own, cannot possibly make themselves understood.