Quotes About Wisdom

I liked to put my hands on work that had been blessed by good minds and the passing of time.

Then sense. Use your sense. Not all of us are born for greatness, but all of us have sense. Make use of it. Think. Think long and well.

and old Indian saying: 'It's better to know one mountain than to climb many.

Does a man's existence change in any way when he removes his overcoat? Neither does it change when death removes the overcoat of his body. He's still the same person. No wiser. No happier. No better off. Exactly the same. "Death is merely continuation at another level.

To look at the entire journey all at once was stupidity. You thought of it in segments; that was the only way.

There were still many things to learn, but not so many as before.

Of only one thing I am certain. If the manuscript is true, all of us had better examine our lives. Carefully.

Miró hacia la biblioteca. Aquella sabiduría no calmaría nunca su fuego; siglos y siglos de palabras no podían satisfacer aquel deseo imperativo e irracional.

as Huxley put it-'to sit down before fact as a little child—be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses nature leads.

Words never fail. We hear them, we read them; they enter into the mind and become part of us for as long as we shall live. Who speaks reason to his fellowmen bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen. There must be some minimum allowable dose of inanity beyond which the mind cannot remain reasonable. Irrationality, like buried chemical waste, sooner or later must seep into all the tissues of thought.

If you should prefer to understand that children are those human beings who have not yet found the grasp of their own minds, then the task you have given yourself, that task of rearing a child wisely and well, is suddenly transformed from indoctrination to education, in its truest sense, and made not only possible but even likely--provided, to be sure, one little prerequisite, which is that you are not a child, that you have come into the grasp of your own mind.

I have to confess that, in the years I have spent as a schoolteacher, I have learned much more from my students than they have from me. While that will surely sound like a feigned humility, it isn't feigned, and it isn't humility either.

There was a time, and we can easily see it in the five or six centuries that run roughly from the time of Socrates to the time of Epictetus, when the idea of education was very simple, and the supposed consequences of education, tremendous. With us, it is the other way around.

Yes, I think you'll find that all the best teachers are old bats.

We write by the light of every book we've read.

Grandma saved herself a lot of bother by not being the kind of person you question.

What little we knew about grownups didn't seem to cover Grandma.

I was getting long in the leg but still short on experience.

A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words.

Every belief will be outgrown, in time. The first lesson of the universe is to never reason from only a single instance. Unless you only have one instance. In which case: find another.

As certain as weather coming from the west, the things people know for sure will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.

Time didn't age you; memory did.

An old man, I want only peace. The things of this world mean nothing. I know no good way to live and I can't stop getting lost in my thoughts, my ancient forests. The wind that waves the pines loosens my belt. The mountain moon lights me as I play my lute.

Watching the man, hard-of-hearing, hard-of-speech Patty learns that real joy consists of knowing that human wisdom counts less than the shimmer of beeches in a breeze. As certain as weather coming from the west, the things people know for sure will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.