Quotes About Wisdom

The transmission of knoledge from generation to generation is one of the miracles of civilization.

This was what Napoleon had never understood

Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

If the vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet; for such things are of the spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.

The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.

You have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping.

My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow?

The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.

But except in rare circumstances, you can train until you're blue in the face and you'd never be as good as if you just focused on one thing at a time." What we're doing when we multitask "is learning to be skillful at a superficial level." The Roman philosopher Seneca May have put it best two thousand years ago: "To be everywhere is to be nowhere.

There was something calming in the reticence of all those books, their willingness to wait years, decades even, for the right reader to come along and pull them from their appointed slots. Take your time, the books whispered to me in their dusty voices. We're not going anywhere.

The brain's plasticity is not limited to the somatosensory cortex, the area that governs our sense of touch. It's universal. Virtually all of our neural circuits—whether they're involved in feeling, seeing, hearing, moving, thinking, learning, perceiving, or remembering—are subject to change. The received wisdom is cast aside.

The mind of the experienced book reader is a calm mind, not a buzzing one. When it comes to the firing of our neurons, it's a mistake to assume that more is better.

anti-intellectual

We should imitate bees," Seneca wrote, "and we should keep in separate compartments whatever we have collected from our diverse reading, for things conserved separately keep better. Then, diligently applying all the resources of our native talent, we should mingle all the various nectars we have tasted, and then turn them into a single sweet substance, in such a way that, even if it is apparent where it originated, it appears quite different from what it was in its original state.

By substituting outer symbols for inner memories, writing threatens to make us shallower thinkers, he says, preventing us from achieving the intellectual depth that leads to wisdom and true happiness.

true enlightenment comes only through contemplation and introspection.

When you are called to a sick man, be sure you know what the matter is — if you do not know, nature can do a great deal better than you can guess.

Seems to me if you talk about these things too much, the magic gets lost and pretty soon talk is all there is. Some things in life just... are.

Man is the measure of all things', meaning that there is no truth except that which man perceives.

You must learn to question everything. To wait before moving, to look before stepping, and to observe everything

Nicholas Guild

one is creeping into middle age and is less easily distracted by one's appetites, which have grown feeble, and by one's passions, which seem such a bore - all but the consuming desire for knowledge and understanding. That grows. - Aldous Huxley

America is the best half-educated country in the world.

thos anthrp?i daím?n Character for man is fate. Heraclitus