Quotes About Wisdom

Fairy tales are not just for children. They are for all humans, having the power to help us change not only ourselves but, indeed, the whole world.

Fairy tales have been with us for a very long time. Ever since humans invented language, we have used those sounds laden with meaning to create stories – to teach, to warn, to entertain, and to effect change upon the world. Those stories have been handed down through many generations – changing with each retelling, but still carrying within them the same wisdom and transformative power that has helped shape the human psyche.

The Coven of Witches, however, believed only in the natural forces of the world. Everyone was free to seek their own path to wisdom and to worship in whatever way they pleased. If they prayed, it was to Eà, who encompassed both light and darkness, life and death, the creative and the destructive. Eà was neither good nor evil, male nor female. Eà was both and neither.

What good would learning be if we concentrated on what we already knew? It is only by learning those things that come to us with difficulty that we truly gain wisdom.

I was the oldest god, for one thing.

harm can be done by those who proffer an opinion when they are only in partial possession of the facts. A man might do better to hold his tongue than scatter words without a care as to where they might land.

If we do not remember those who have gone before us, we are destined to repeat the same mistakes. We walk blind through

I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well.

Do you think we are truly ever old?" she says. "I mean, inside ourselves, old? Ready to be old?

the smartest things you can do is talk to someone who has done a similar project before and confirm what those steps are. Perhaps

Some questions don't have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.

What in the world would we do without our libraries?

I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.

Love must be learned and learned again; There is no end.

It takes a lady of a certain age to contain the stuff [whiskey]. Particularly the Irish. No offense but a bit of weathering and experience are required not to go right off the edge with it. I would heisitate to serve Irish to a green schoolgirl. Mixes and vodka are enough for them to go wrong on. I couldn't look at myself shaving if I poured Irish for the young.

We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes.

Read for fun, read for information, read in order to understand yourself and other people with quite different ideas. Learn about the world beyond your door. Learn to be compassionate and grow in wisdom. Books can help us in all these ways.

Even a prince may be a fool

Civilization as well as education takes a downward spiral when it ceases to ask What is truth? and concerns itself primarily with what is measurable.

Ain't no one ever told you yet? I recon I thought you've all figured out. - What? - That all this stuff about happy-endings is lies. The only ending in this world is death.

Thinking about myself as a crazy, independent old woman made me feel almost happy.

He put down his roll and reached over and took her gnarled hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb. I'm trying to tell the child something only you and I can understand. How good it is to be old. I watched her face go from being startled by his gesture to being pleased that he had somehow joined her side against me. Then she seemed to remember. She drew back her hand. We'll die, she said. Yes, he said. But we'll be ready. The young ones never are.

We are not wise enough, we adults, to know what book will be right for any child at any particular moment, but the richer the book, the more imaginative, the more emotionally true, the more beautiful the language, the better the chance that it will minister to a child's deep, inarticulate fears.

As I turn and walk toward Murray Hill and home and purring Phoebe, I suspect that we do not know any more than the people of the past did, but only think somewhat differently.