Quotes About Wisdom

You must pray that the way be long, full of adventures and experiences.

do not hurry the journey at all: better that it lasts for many years and you arrive an old man on the island, rich from all that you have gained on the way, not counting on Ithaca for riches. For Ithaca gave you the splendid voyage: without her you would never have embarked. She has nothing more to give you now. And though you find her poor, she has not misled you; you having grown so wise, so experienced from your travels, by then you will have learned what Ithacas mean.

The most dangerous people in the world are those with a grain of knowledge who promote themselves as authorities or authority figures. They only proceed to give half truthful, half right answers and in the end we all lose because of them.

St. Thomas Aquinas, she knew, was reputed to say that he feared the man who had just one book, and she understood what he meant about the narrowness of outlook that could give. However, she thought, perhaps a man with one well-loved book might be a more rounded individual than the man who possessed hundreds and never opened any of them.

Inside every old person is a younger person wondering "What the hell happened?"

I think you can learn as much from success as you can from failure.

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

Books should always be open.

I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.

He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.

Be sincere; be brief; be seated." (on the art of public speaking)

I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it.

You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]

Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them.

Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask for anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly. Love, truth, beauty, wisdom and consolation against death. Who had said that? Someone else who loved books.

Sometimes it's a good thing we don't remember things half as well as books do.

you can not fully read a book without being alone. But through this very solitude you become intimately involved with people whom you might never have met otherwise, either because they have been dead for centuries or because they spoke languages you cannot understand. And, nonetheless, they have become your closest friends, your wisest advisors, the wizards that hypnotize you, the lovers you have always dreamed of. -Antonio munoz molinas, "the power of the pen

I while yet a youth wrote in a quite large volume three books of magical things, which I called De occulta philosophia , in which whatever was then erroneous because of my curious youth, now, more cautious, I wish to retract by this recantation, for formerly I spent much time and goods on these vanities.

Perhaps the preacher is hoping to acquire from her reading what I call "middle wisdom." Let's say that middle wisdom consists of insights into life that are more profound than commonplaces, but less so than great proverbs.

The Bible is thought of as authoritative on everything of which it speaks. Moreover, it speaks of everything. We do not mean that it speaks of football games, of atoms, etc., directly, but we do mean that it speaks of everything either directly or by implication.

If I had learned education I would not have had time to learn anything else.

You are a sweet little thing. You are the morning sunlight in my dreary afternoon sky. It is not that you would do anything so unforgivable. It is just that there is a way of doing things that is right and a way that is wrong. You are young, and the world is old. When you are a few years older, I don't want you to have to look back on anything lacking in dignity, in which you cut a ridiculous figure.

In darkness God's truth shines most clear.

Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. "Corrie," he began gently, "when you and I go to Amsterdam-when do I give you your ticket?" I sniffed a few times, considering this. "Why, just before we get on the train." "Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we're going to need things, too. Don't run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need-just in time.