Quotes About Wisdom

you ought not judge" is itself a judgment! (Pluralists misinterpret Jesus' comments on judging [Matt. 7:1-5]. Jesus did not prohibit judging as such, only judging hypocritically.)

Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living.

Mark Twain had a point when he concluded that it was not the parts of the Bible he did not understand that bothered him—but the parts he did understand!)

Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists independent of anyone's knowledge of it. (Gravity existed prior to Newton.)

Folk wisdom has it that five Jews wrote the rules of society: Moses said, "The law is everything." Jesus said, "Love is everything." Marx said, "Money is everything." Freud said, "Sex is everything." Einstein said, "Everything is relative.

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

Scholars, I plead with you, Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses?

When I was young, a teacher had forbidden me to say "more perfect" because she said if a thing is perfect it can't be more so. But by now I had seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it.

At the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.

Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.

Some people grow up at 15, some at 38. It is more painful at 38.

Jokes and folklore and poetic metaphor, the wisdom of folly, tell the secret truth.

Consequently not any self-control or self-limitation for the sake of specific ends, but rather a carefree letting go of one-self.… Not caution but rather a wise blindness.… Not working to acquire silent, slowly increasing possessions, but rather a continuous squandering of all shifting values.… This way of being has something naïve and instinctive about it and resembles that period of the unconscious best characterized by a joyous confidence: namely the period of childhood.

Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread.

A good reliable set of bowels is worth more to a man than any quantity of brains." Henry Wheeler Shaw

We shall give up the things of childhood -- gods and demons, planets and suns, guilts and regrets.

Stay a dreamer, and you'll never have your dream; get down in the nitty-gritty, and when you get your dream you see what horseshit it was in the first place.

You may use different sorts of sentences and illustrations before different sorts of audiences, but you don't -- if you are wise -- talk down to any audience.

We've all heard that we have to learn from our mistakes, but I think it's more important to learn from successes. If you learn only from your mistakes, you are inclined to learn only errors.

Four Universal (Bodhisattva) Vows: "Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them; the deluding passions are inexhaustible, I vow to destroy them; the Dharma gates are manifold, I vow to know them; the Buddha Way is supreme, I vow to master it.

As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can't remember the other two.

La macchina tecnologicamente più efficiente che l'uomo abbia mai inventato è il libro.

the secret of wisdom is detachment without withdrawal.

As nothing is certain or permanent in the world, nothing either real or unreal, the secret of wisdom is detachment without withdrawal. All goals and aims may cheat us, but if we run away from them we shall find ourselves bumping into them.