Quotes About Wisdom

because we were all catching on to the fact that some questions were better not asked. Piper

Age is not always the best judge of competence.

Inteligente. For years it had been enough to be the intelligent one. All that had meant, in the beginning, was that you could answer the kinds of questions that your teachers asked. The whole world appeared to be fact-based, and that had been a relief to Greer, who could dredge up facts with great ease, a magician pulling coins from behind any available ear. Facts appeared before her, and the she simply articulated them, and in this way she became known as the smartest one in her glass.

No, of course not. I just feel content," she said carefully. "That's an old person's word," said Ethan.

I think having the knowledge, plus the experiences you've lived through, make you definitely not fragile. They make you brave.

When I learned to read, it changed everything.

the Olympian vantage point that time provides:

Everybody's grown-up, everybody's old, and the normal rules do apply.

What you knew, felt and wanted now, and the way you could love now, had a long valley of seriousness running through it that had always perhaps been there, though to a lesser extent.

Never cry over pain, their mother told them. Those are wasted tears.

You looked like you knew a thing or two, she told me later. But were ready to learn a lot more.

Impatient men are generous ones. Or haven't you learned that by now?

People forget that old women were young once, but d'you think we old women forget? In my heart, I'm still thirty.

Trying to justify a world we don't hold all the answers to is what bedevils the best of us. Sometimes it's better just to accept that things are as we see them.

I thought I knew everything. There's the challenge fate loves best, isn't it? I was ripe for a fall and so … the apple.

Omnia Mundi Fumus et Umbra All in the World is Smoke and Shadow –Latin motto

There are no white knights, Soph. Not like in your stories. You have to see people for what they are, not what you want them to be.

Snakes have many forms, you know. They have not always been evil or poisonous - or at least, not only so. Just as desire has not always been evil. In ancient times, snakes were a symbol of healing. Of wisdom. They can be very beautiful.

I morti verze i oci ai vivi. The dead open the eyes of the living.

Maybe being an adult wasn't crossing some arbitrary age line into wisdom. Maybe it was like anything else - training wheels and mistakes, trial and error, and now and again that feeling that you might have wings.

Adulthood is knowing that a fully realized character is always more important than the lines.

I've never been a big believer in formal education.

If you're lucky, the friends you make when you're sixteen stay with you for the rest of your life. If you're smart, you know when it's time to let them go.

Abandoning a task that is futile and pointless is not giving up.