Quotes About Wisdom

It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images

How to teach again what has been taught correctly it incorrectly 1000 thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task. How to render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark? Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold.

The myth is not my own; I have it from my mother. Euripides

And then they eat the apple, the knowledge of the opposites.

But if we are to grasp the full value of the materials, we must note that myths are not exactly comparable to dream. Their figures originate from the same sources -- the unconscious wells of fantasy-- and their grammar is the same, but they are not the spontaneous products of sleep. On the contrary their patterns are consciously controlled. And their understood function is to serve as powerful picture language for the communication of traditional wisdom.

Oriental idea: you don't teach until you are asked. You don't force your mission down people's throats.) And so the boy

is there not some point of wisdom beyond the conflicts of illusion and truth by which lives can be put back together again? That is a prime question, I would say, of this hour in the bringing up of children.

In the Hellenistic period, Scylla was identified with the rock of logic, while Charybdis was identified with the abyss of mysticism. One must sail between—as these are all instructions for moving down through the middle, between each pair of opposites.

The boy answers, Don't ask unless you are willing to be hurt. Indra says, I ask. Teach. (That, by the way, is a good Oriental idea: you don't teach until you are asked. You don't force your mission down people's throats.)

While the boy is talking, an army of ants parades across the floor. The boy laughs when he sees them, and Indra's hair stands on end, and he says to the boy, Why do you laugh? The boy answers. Don't ask unless you are willing to be hurt. Indra says, I ask. Teach. (That, by the way, is a good Oriental idea: you don't teach until you are asked. You don't force your mission down people's throats.)

Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell

A félelem az elsÅ' tapasztalat, és ez a tapasztalat azt mondja: én.

first book of Corinthians: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

The body is not the Bodhi tree. The mind, no mirror bright. Since nothing is there, on what should dust alight?

the only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and can be reached only through suffering. Privation and suffering alone open the mind to all that is hidden to others.' 

there is a fourth function of myth, and this is the one that I think everyone must try today to relate to—and that is the pedagogical function, of how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances. Myths can teach you that.

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

Menyindir biar berasas, memuji biar berisi.

It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.

A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.

I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.

But now I am six. And I'm clever as clever. And now I think I'll stay six now forever and ever.

I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain at All.