Quotes About Wisdom

How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young or slender. 'Thank God!' we say,' those illusions are gone.' Everything added to the self is a burden as well as a pride.

one must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself

To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside.

It is worth pointing out that feeling things (which usually means feeling them painfully ) is at some level linked to the acquisition of knowledge.

We must, between periods of digging in the dark, endeavour always to transform our tears into knowledge.

We are idiots now, we have been idiots in the past and we will be idiots again in the future - and that is OK.

The truth, in so far as a human being is able to attain such a thing, lies in a statement which it seems impossible to disprove. It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

But the museum is only a prelude to a life well lived.

Epicurus observed that: Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.

There is a great difference between identifying a problem and solving it, between wisdom and the wise life. We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

He (Proust) tells us, for instance, that there are two methods by which a person can acquire wisdom, painlessly via a teacher or painfully via life, and he proposes that the painful variety is far superior... We cannot be taught wisdom, we have to discover it for ourselves by a journey which no one can undertake for us, an effort which no one can spare us.

Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.

The moral? To recognize that our best chance of contentment lies in taking up the wisdom offered to us in coded form through our coughs, allergies, social gaffes, and emotional betrayals, and to avoid the ingratitude of those who blame the peas, the bores, the time, and the weather.

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

feeling things (which usually means feeling them painfully) is at some level linked to the acquisition of knowledge.

In fact, in Proust's view, we don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped.

We will live in more beautiful, wise and humane communities when we have learnt to reorient the system of ambition, when the most driven and energetic individuals have the chance to win honour through work that taps into mankind's highest needs.

Her mother always said one should never go to bed on an argument.

Knowing that something difficult is being attempted doesn't rob the wise of ambition, but it makes them more steadfast, calmer and less prone to panic about the problems that will invariably come their way. The wise rarely expect anything to be wholly easy or to go entirely well.

painless thoughts...and painful thoughts...there are two methods by which a person can acquire wisdom, and he proposes that the painful variety is the far superior

A good way of evaluating the wisdom of someone's ideas might be to undertake a careful examination of the state of their own mind and health. After all, if their pronouncements were truly worthy of our attention, we should expect that the first person to reap their benefits would be their creator.

wanted to have read everything on the shelves at once...a precondition of becoming knowledgeable may be a resignation to, and accommodation with, the extent of one's ignorance, an accommodation which requires a sense that this ignorance need not be permanent, or indeed need not be taken personally, as a reflection of one's inherent capacities.

Setting people examination papers measuring wisdom rather than learning would probably result in an immediate realignment of the hierarchy of intelligence – and a surprising new élite. Montaigne delighted in the prospect of the incongruous people who would now be recognized as cleverer than the lauded but often unworthy traditional candidates.

We must reconcile ourselves to the necessary imperfectability of existence