Top 100 Wisdom Quotes

1

Perhaps wisdom is simply a matter of waiting, and healing a question of time. And anything good you've ever been given is yours forever.

2

There's nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way, you will find, live, and become a realization of your own personal myth.

3

A girl becomes a wife with her eyes wide open. She knows that those sweetest words, 'I take thee to be my wedded husband,' really mean, 'I promise thee to cook three meals a day for 60 years; thee will I clean up after; thee will I talk to even when thou art not listening; thee will I worry about, cry over and take all manner of hurts from.

4

Politics is noble; it is one of the highest forms of charity, as Paul VI used to say. We sully it when we mix it with business. The relationship between the Church and political power can also be corrupted if common good is not the only converging point.

5

How many lessons there are and how little they are taken

6

You can do anything, but not everything.

7

Within each experience of pain or negativity is the opportunity to challenge the perception that lies behind it, the fear that lies behind it, and choose to learn with wisdom. The fear will not vanish immediately, but it will disintegrate as you work with courage. When fear ceases to scare you, it cannot stay. When you choose to learn through wisdom, to evolve consciously, your fears surface one at a time in order for you to exorcise them with inner faith. This is how it happens. You exorcise your own demons.

8

Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.

9

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

10

Rarely promise, but, if lawful, constantly perform.

11

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

12

My description of wisdom has nothing to do with benevolence and righteousness, it is to do with being wise in one's own virtue, nothing more. My description of being has nothing to do with benevolence and righteousness, it is that one should be led by one's innate nature, nothing more.

13

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.

14

A feeling of discouragement when you slip up is a sure sign that you put your faith in deeds

15

Do not fix hopes on your health, and do not laugh away life. Remember how they walked and now all their joints lie separately, and the tongue with which they talked lightly is eaten away by the worms

16

The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing.

17

The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.

18

A wise physician, skill'd our wounds to heal, is more than armies to the public weal.

19

The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness.

20

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage and wisdom moves the world.

21

Brands should think of themselves not as storytellers but storybuilders. We plant seeds of content and let our community build on it.

22

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

23

Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common; or, at any rate, they care for it only to the extent to which each is individually concerned.

24

We must speak first about the division of land and about those who cultivate it: who should they be and what kind of person? We do not agree with those who have said that property should be communally owned, but we do believe that there should be a friendly arrangement for its common use, and that none of the citizens should be without means of support.

25

Scoutmasters need the capacity to enjoy the out-of-doors.

26

Know how to ask. There is nothing more difficult for some people, nor for others, easier.

27

Clean your finger before you point at my spots.

28

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?" "What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?" "I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet . Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said. "What's that?" the Unbeliever asked. "Wisdom from the Western Taoist,"I said. "It sounds like something from Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "It is," I said. "That's not about Taoism," he said. "Oh, yes it is," I said.

29

None of us was born knowing or wise; but men become wise by consideration, observation, experience.

30

Advances are Made by Answering Questions. Discoveries are Made by Questioning Answers.

31

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

32

Man can not live by bread alone ... he must have peanut butter.

33

The Buddha is your real body, your original mind. This mind has no form or characteristics, no cause or effect, no tendons or bones. It's like space. You can't hold it. It's not the mind of materialists or nihilists. If you don't see your own miraculously aware nature, you'll never find a Buddha, even if you break your body into atoms.

34

I scarcely know the meaning of your question; much less can I answer it.

35

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

36

I'm not a master. I'm a student-master, meaning that I have the knowledge of a master and the expertise of a master, but I'm still learning. So I'm a student-master. I don't believe in the word 'master.' I consider the master as such when they close the casket.

37

No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power.

38

You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.

39

Our passions are not too strong, they are too weak. We are far too easily pleased.

40

Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it.

41

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.

42

Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man.

43

Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.

44

Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.

45

If one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business.

46

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

47

It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition.

48

Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.

49

The most effective way to live is as a warrior. A warrior may worry and think before making any decision, but once he makes it, he goes his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him. That's the warrior's way.

50

To build a great company, which is a CEO's job, sometimes you have to stand up against conventional wisdom.

51

Your life is a sacred journey. It is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation, continuously expanding your vision of what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply, listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step along the way. You are on the path... exactly where you are meant to be right now... And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing, of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love.

52

Kelso and Adler's book could start a revolution.

53

To know the world, one must construct it

54

Poverty, disease, sorrow, imprisonment and other evils are the fruits borne by the tree of one's own sins.

55

Learning is like a cow of desire. It, like her, yields in all seasons. Like a mother, it feeds you on your journey. Therefore learning is a hidden treasure.

56

The next thing to having wisdom ourselves, is to profit by that of others.

57

Good listeners believe they can learn something from everyone.

58

Kindness is not something that we put on for certain occasions, like a piece of jewelry; rather, it is an attribute of God's that He desires to reproduce in us.

59

Conventionality is not morality.

60

Sometimes, to be silent is to be most eloquent.

61

Accept and allow. This is the key to living a life full of Love.

62

The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.

63

To understand yourself is the key to wisdom.

64

Applause is a receipt, not a bill.

65

Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make - bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake - if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble.

66

The notion that any one person can describe 'what really happened' is an absurdity. If ten - or a hundred - people witness an event, there will be ten - or a hundred - different versions of what took place. What we see and how we interpret it depends entirely upon our individual past experience.

67

Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of themarket, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.

68

In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty...in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe.

69

In order to acquire anything in the physical universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This doesn't mean you give up your intention to create your desire...and you don't give up the desire. You give up your attachment to the result.

70

Given the unprecedented ignorance of the Bible in contemporary America, it is likely that more young Americans will only know the Noah of 'Noah.' We can only hope that the film offers even a fraction of the wisdom of the original.

71

You cannot get ahead while you are getting even.

72

The superior man blames himself. The inferior man blames others.

73

You can't know it all. No matter how smart you are, no matter how comprehensive your education, no matter how wide ranging your experience, there is simply no way to acquire all the wisdom you need to make your business thrive.

74

The past has no power over the present moment.

75

Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.

76

Words were never invented to fully explain the peaceful aura that surrounds us when we are in communion with minds of the same thoughts.

77

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

78

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

79

Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.

80

Life is no brief candle but a splendid torch made to burn ever more brightly.

81

O liberty, Parent of happiness, celestial born When the first man became a living soul; His sacred genius thou.

82

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

83

It is significant that the nationalization of thought has proceded everywhere pari passu with the nationalization of industry.

84

The man of wisdom is the man of years.

85

The weak have remedies, the wise have joys; superior wisdom is superior bliss.

86

I have been reading the Old Testament, a most bloodthirsty and perilous book for the young. Jehovah is beyond doubt the worst character in fiction.

87

A lie has always a certain amount of weight with those who wish to believe it.

88

Wisdom may be perennial, but to see its relevance we must see it lived out.

89

If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.

90

The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours.

91

When we looked at the life cycle in our 40s, we looked to old people for wisdom. At 80, though, we look at other 80-year-olds to see who got wise and who not. Lots of old people don't get wise, but you don't get wise unless you age.

92

I enter a whorehouse with the same interest as I do the British museum or the Metropolitan - in the same spirit of curiosity. Here are the works of man, here is an art of man, here is the eternal pursuit of gold and pleasure. I couldn't be more sincere. This doesn't mean that if I go to La Scala in Milan to hear Carmen I want to get up on the stage and participate. I do not. Neither do I always participate in a fine representative national whorehouse - but I must see it as a spectacle, an offering, a symptom of a nation.

93

I am on the side of the underdog except when I am on the side of the rich

94

The wisdom acquired with the passage of time is a useless gift unless you share it.

95

It's surprising how much wisdom every man possesses -- if not for his own affairs, then for the affairs of others.

96

In your 20s you can be pretty, but you don't accomplish real beauty until you find wisdom and depth.

97

We possess nothing certainly except the past

98

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.

99

The strongest symptom of wisdom in man is his being sensible of his own follies.

100

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

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