Quotes About Wisdom

And a good warrior knows when to lose a battle so she can live to fight the

The truth can be a hard thing, Jo. It's often best left hidden.

Simple is the opposite of hard, easy is also the opposite of hard. But simple is not the same as easy. Not at all.

Very. I ground the lenses myself. The left gives you hindsight; the right, foresight.

Only fools rush Death,' said Death

Do not wish for beauty, Alice. Wish for cleverness instead. Wish for a strong back and a strong will. They will do you more good than red lips and dimpels.

she knew that, like her, I saw the world as it is, not as I would have it be.

Be careful, Belle. Not all who try to befriend lions succeed

But life isn't a fairy tale, Belle.

Cripes Miss Wilcox, they're not guns,' I said. No, they're not Mattie, they're books. And a hundred times more dangerous.

You can't tell a seventeen-year-old anything. They think they're immortal. They don't listen. Seventeen-year-olds have to see it for themselves.

Son," he said, "you monkeyed up.

But knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing; without a story, it's all just information.

It made me alert, like someone had scrubbed mint all over my skin. I'd walk into that stinking, miserable prison and for the next three hours, a wise and beautiful woman would float out of the wreckage of my life, and her words and thoughts and tiniest movements were precious.

Knowledge is power, so they say, and yet any counter will tell you that merely possessing data, in itself, is neither useful nor predictive.

Knowing your latitude and longitude is not the same as knowing where you are.

Never part with a fact unless you've no choice.

We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?

And try to stay out of trouble with the ladies. Remember, they all have fathers and brothers and some of them have armies.

we don't have a god of bloody stupid ideas

Don't tie yourself in knots trying to predict the future.

It's good common sense, your grace.' Mahina shook her head. 'Good sense is far from common, I fear, Tarja.

Beauty comes from a life well lived. If you've lived well, your smile lines are in the right places, and your frown lines aren't too bad, what more do you need?

Like all young people, she'd once harbored the unconscious conviction that the world had begun the day she was born. Time had disabused her of this notion. It was, she supposed, the fundamental difference between youth and age. She