Quotes About Wisdom

The truth to reconcile these truths he found in the experience of men, which the men of his generation must have realized far beyond others, that pain and error have their purpose and their use: they are steps of the ladder of knowledge: 'God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.' (Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

Edith Hamilton

But in Athens, in Platonic Athens, at least, the idea that each man must himself be a research worker in the truth if he were ever to attain to any share in it, seemed rather to attract than to repel.

The truth to reconcile these truths he found in the experience of men, which the men of his generation must have realized far beyond others, that pain and error have their purpose and their use: they are steps of the ladder of knowledge: God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. A great and lonely thinker. Only

There lies less good than most believe In ale for mortal men. A man knows nothing if he knows not That wealth oft begets an ape. A coward thinks he will live forever If only he can shun warfare. Tell one your thoughts, but beware of two. All know what is known to three. A silly man lies awake all night, Thinking of many things. When the morning comes he is worn with care, And his trouble is just as it was.

I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.

All those who seek truth, seek God, whether this is clear to them or not.

To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.

There was once a little girl who was so very intelligent that her parents feared that she would die. But an aged aunt, who had crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel, said, 'My dears, let her marry the first man she falls in love with, and she will make such a fool of herself that it will probably save her life.

The greatest mistake is to think that we ever know why we do things...I suppose the nearest we can ever come to it is by getting what old people call 'experience.' But by the time we've got that we're no longer the persons who did the things we no longer understand. The trouble is, I suppose, that we change every moment; and the things we did stay.

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.

Two ways to be a light for all, is to be a flaming candle or the mirror that reflects it

Folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom.

The things that had filled his days seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like the wrangles of medieval schoolmen over metaphysical terms that nobody had ever understood.

The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction of prudence.

He had the kind of character in which prudence is a vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment.

Lizzy Elmsworth was not a good-tempered girl, but she was too intelligent to let her temper interfere with her opportunities.

He knew enough of his subject to know that he did not know enough to write about it....

Age seemed to have come down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm.

he was the kind of man who brings a sour mouth to the eating of the sweetest apple.

The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is truth?

the endless labour of rolling human stupidity up the steep hill of understanding.

The one woman knew but did not understand; the other, it seemed, understood without knowing.