Quotes About Wisdom

What we know is a drop. What we don't know is the ocean.

No man suffers injustice without learning, vaguely but surely, what justice is.

But, children, you should never letSuch angry passions rise;Your little hands were never madeTo tear each other's eyes.

Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals. . . must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther.

Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly, with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.

You should therefore contrive and practice some proper methods to acquaint yourself with your own ignorance, and to impress your mind with a deep and painful sense of the low and imperfect degrees of your present knowledge, that you may be incited with labor and activity to pursue after greater measures.

No man is obliged to learn and know every thing; this can neither be sought nor required, for it is utterly impossible; yet all persons are under some obligation to improve their own understanding; otherwise it will be a barren desert, or a forest overgrown with weeds and brambles. Universal ignorance or infinite errors will overspread the mind which is utterly neglected and lies without any cultivation. Skill

Once a day....call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.

Let dogs delight to bark and bite, ?For God hath made them so; Let bears and lions growl and fight, ?For 'tis their nature too. But, children, you should never let ?Such angry passions rise; Your little hands were never made ?To tear each other's eyes.

The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.

You make a mistake if you don't try to figure out love," he said as he served the tarte citron- boldly tangy with a hint of sweetness held in his feathery pastry. "If you give yourself to someone without understanding it, you are only asking to be a slave".

What one has not experienced one will never understand in print.

The more we know about the past, the more we know what is not true about the present

las ciencias naturales no eran el paradigma del conocimiento.

To understand is to perceive patterns.

The view that the truth is one and undivided, and the same for all men everywhere at all times, whether one finds it in the pronouncements of sacred books, traditional wisdom, the authority of churches, democratic majorities, observation and experiment conducted by qualified experts, or the convictions of simple folks uncorrupted by civilisation---this view, in one form or another, is central to western thought, which stems from Plato and his disciples.

That old saying which the peasants call the bachelors' prayer: "I pray thee, good Lord, that I may not be married. But if I am to be married, that I may not be a cuckold. But if I am to be a cuckold, that I may not know. But if I am to know, that I may not mind."

Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine.

Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.

Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest.

Every Mistake Teach Us a Lesson

It isn't about knowing the most stories, child. It is about carrying the ones that are most important and passing them along.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

I had no systematic way of learning but proceeded like a quilt maker, a patch of knowledge here a patch there but lovingly knitted. I would hungrily devour the intellectual scraps and leftovers of the learned.