Quotes About Wisdom

The very young are not ready for much knowledge. It must be given to them slowly, in proportion to their years of life. One must first live before he can safely know.

But somewhere I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself.

If a superior man undertakes something and tried to lead, He goes astray. But if he follows, he finds guidance. It is favourable to find friends in the West and South, and quiet perseverance brings good fortune.

But the important lesson which he taught me was that if one would be happy he must not raise his head above his neighbor's. "He who raises his head above the heads of others," Mr. Kung said, "will sooner or later be decapitated.

there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The

weak? You must learn to take from a person that which is his best and ignore all else.

don't know what to tell you," he said slowly. "I have not had time to think much about myself. Wherever I have been—at least until now, I have been mostly alone. The others were always much bigger—much older." He paused to consider himself in the past. "Older in years, that is," he amended. "I've always been too old for myself." She looked at him thoughtfully. "Then you have an old soul.

So Wang Lung sat, and so his age came on him day by day and year by year, and he slept fitfully in the sun as his father had done, and he said to himself that his life was done and he was satisfied with it.

The tears of the old come as easily as the tears of children

Long ago she had learned that to seem to yield is always stronger than to show resistance, and to acknowledge a fault quickly is always to show an invincible rectitude.

I am entirely happy except that I feel the need of more knowledge of some sort. What sort I do not know myself." "Perhaps it is not so much knowledge as more understanding of that which you already know

It is easy to destroy but hard to create. Remember that, when you want to destroy something." The

the superior man leads not by violence or by coarse physical acts but by the pure intelligence of a wise mind.

It is not well for a man to know more than is necessary for his daily living.

Whatever came to him was good. It was life. It was knowledge.

demands the utmost in wisdom, in attack, in endurance. Violence is simple and easy, it is the sword of the stupid and dull-witted, and it always leaves chaos. To carry on a positive revolution without violence—ah, that is a challenge to intelligence!

One faces the future with one's past

Nations, like individuals, can only learn by their own individual experience." Yul-chun

But she would not be hastened. Words were to her things to be caught one by one and released with difficulty.

You cannot be happy unless you understand that life is sad.

and comforted by his greater wisdom he fell asleep again deeply in the darkness and the stillness.

Endurance is only the beginning. There must be acceptance and the knowledge that sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is an alchemy to sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.

inquired. She

But the boy only muttered bitterly, You do not understand—you are too old—you understand nothing.