Quotes About Wisdom

In this instance, he was wise enough to be suspicious of his own desire to seem wise, and to refuse to indulge in it….my father understood that advice - even wise advice - actually does nothing for the advisee, changes nothing inside, and can actually cause confusion when the advisee is made to feel the wide gap between the comparative simplicity of the advice and the totally muddled complications of his own situation and path.

Don't ask why if you don't want to die. Do as you're told if you want to get old.

THE MAN WHO KNOWS HIS LIMITATIONS HAS NONE.

Naive people are, more or less by definition, unaware that they're naive.

It's no coincidence it's the gurus on mountains who're wise. You get to the top: you're already theirs.

Ä°ki genç bal?k,beraberce suda yüzüyormuÅŸ. Kar??dan gelen yaÅŸl?ca bir bal??a rastlam??lar;yaÅŸl?ca bal?k onlara bir baÅŸ selam? vererek ÅŸöyle demiÅŸ:Günayd?n çocuklar.Su nas?l? Genç bal?klar yüzmeye devam etmiÅŸ ama bir süre sonra biri diÄŸerine dönüp sormuÅŸ:Su da neyin nesi?

Certe cose non solo non possono essere insegnate, ma possono essere ritardate da altre cose che invece possono essere insegnate

The library, and step on it!

La verità ti renderà libero. Ma solo quando avrà finito con te.

Si scopre che tanto più è insipida la frase fatta ...., tanto più affilati sono i canini della verità vera che nasconde

you are in motion a prince and in repose a sage.

Datum: At least one-third of ancient rulers' seers and magicians were in fact fired or killed early in their tenure because it emerged that the bulk of what they foresaw or intuited was irrelevant. Not incorrect, just irrelevant, pointless.

Ci sono due pesci che nuotano e a un certo punto incontrano un pesce anziano che va nella direzione opposta, fa un cenno di saluto e dice: Salve, ragazzi. Com'è l'acqua? I due pesci giovani nuotano un altro po', poi uno guarda l'altro e fa Che cavolo è l'acqua?».

the mystic approaches the hot-dog stand and tells the vendor Make me one with everything.

I spent a lot of time as a volunteer in a nursing home in Amherst last summer. I was reading Dante's Divine Comedy to an old man, Mr. Shulman. One day, I asked him where he was from. He said, 'Just east of here, the Rockies.' I said, 'Mr. Shulman, the Rockies are west of here.' He did a voilà with his hands, and then said, 'I move mountains.' That stuck with me. Fiction either moves mountains or it's boring; it moves mountains or it sits on its ass. -Interview with Larry McCaffery (1993)

Denial,' Charlotte finally says, 'is not a river in Egypt.' 'Hows about the both of you shut the fuck up,' says Emil Minty.

What is unfair can be a stern but invaluable teacher.

no matter how smart you thought you were, you are actually way less smart than that.

Certain things not only can't be taught but can be retarded by other stuff that can be taught.

This is what I get for passing down priceless fruits of hard experience to somebody who still thinks it's exciting to shave.

It starts to turn out that the vapider the AA cliche, the sharper the canines of the real truth it covers.

Humility is nothing else but a right judgment of ourselves.

As sure, therefore, as there is any wisdom in praying for the Spirit of God, so sure is it, that we are to make that Spirit the rule of all our actions;

Nourish it with good works, give it peace in solitude, get it strength in prayer, make it wise with reading, enlighten it by meditation, make it tender with love, sweeten it with humility, humble it with penance, enliven it with psalms and hymns, and comfort it with frequent reflections upon future glory.