Quotes About Wisdom

Old trees are our parents, and our parents' parents, perchance. If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity. . . .

I tell him, people very stupid. They forget everything—where they come from, where they go. I say: Don't worry. Human being leaving this world, very soon. Then the bear get top bunk to himself again.

Los viejos árboles son nuestros padres, acaso los padres de nuestros padres. Si aprendierais los secretos de la Naturaleza, derrocharíais más humanidad

Staré stromy sú naÅ¡imi rodi?mi a rodi?mi naÅ¡ich rodi?ov, náhodou. Ak máÅ¡ pochopiÃ…Â¥ tajomstvá Prírody, musíÅ¡ si viac cvi?iÃ…Â¥ ?udskosÃ…Â¥.

Branches, combing the sun, laughing at gravity, still unfolding. Something moves at the base of the motionless trunks. Nothing. Now everything. This, a voice whispers, from very nearby. This. What we have been given. What we must earn. This will never end.

The library was the best dungeon crawl imaginable: free loot for the finding, combined with the joy of leveling up.

The past always comes clearer, in the future.

the highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought.

And most generally and profoundly: "The very fact that knowledge is itself the basis for civilization points directly to openness as the way to overcome the present crisis.

The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.

In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us.

a person must pass the lessons learned on to others—or there has been no real gift at all.

Yes, transformation is often more about unlearning than learning, which is why the religious traditions call it "conversion" or "repentance.

Try to say that: "I don't know anything". We used to call it "tabula rasa" in Latin. Maybe you could think of yourself as an erased blackboard, ready to be written on. For by and large, what blocks spiritual teaching is the assumption that we already know, or that we don't need to know. We have to pray for the grace of beginner's mind. We need to say with the blind man, "I want to see".

all mature spirituality, in one sense or another, is about letting go and unlearning.

Basically, the first half of life is writing the text, and the second half is writing the commentary on that text.

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.

In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.

If you try to assert wisdom before people have themselves walked it, be prepared for much resistance, denial, push-back, and verbal debate.

We moved from wondering to answering, which has not served us well at all.

Human maturity is neither offensive nor defensive; it is finally able to accept that reality is what it is.

We can save ourselves a lot of distress and accusation by knowing when, where, to whom, and how to talk about spiritually mature things.

The task of the second half of life is, quite simply, to find the actual contents that this container was meant to hold and deliver.