Quotes about wisdom

"Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it."

Butler, Samuel on wisdom   

"Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser."

Carlyle, Thomas on wisdom   

"The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person."

Carlyle, Thomas on wisdom   

"Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise."

Cato The Elder on wisdom
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"Time ripens all things; no man is born wise."

Cervantes, Miguel De on wisdom   

"The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people."

Chaucer, Geoffrey on wisdom   

"Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil -- not the strength to choose between the two."

Cheever, John on wisdom   

"Everything I know I learned after I was thirty."

Clemenceau, Georges on wisdom   

"The extreme limit of wisdom --that's what the public calls madness."

Cocteau, Jean on wisdom   

"A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult."

Collins, John Churton on wisdom   

"The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world."

Colton, Charles Caleb on wisdom
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"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."

Confucius on wisdom
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"There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest."

Confucius on wisdom
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"Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men."

Confucius on wisdom
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"No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, --something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book."

Connolly, Cyril on wisdom   

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of face within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity."

Coolidge, Calvin on wisdom   

"Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness."

Covey, Stephen R. on wisdom
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"Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God, or several signatures of that one archetypal seal, or like so many multiplied reflections of one and the same face, made in several glasses, whereof some are clearer, some obscurer, some standing nearer, some further off."

Cudworth, Ralph J. on wisdom   

"All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope."

Dumas, Alexandre on wisdom
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"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."

Eban, Abba on wisdom   

"Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom."

Elizabeth, Queen on wisdom
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"Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on wisdom   

"Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on wisdom   

"Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on wisdom   

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"Life is a festival only to the wise."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on wisdom   

"There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on wisdom   

"A wise man is he who does not grieve for the thing which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."

Epictetus on wisdom   

"He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God."

Epictetus on wisdom   

"Among mortals second thoughts are wisest."

Euripides on wisdom   

"Wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech."

Evangel on wisdom
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"Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning."

Evans, Bergen on wisdom
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"Timing, degree and conviction are the three wise men in this life."

Fitzhenry, R. I. on wisdom   

"Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt."

Francis of Assisi, St. on wisdom
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"Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late."

Frankfurter, Felix on wisdom   

"Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting."

Franklin, Benjamin on wisdom   

"The doors of wisdom are never shut."

Franklin, Benjamin on wisdom
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"Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone."

Freud, Sigmund on wisdom   

"The beginning of wisdom is to desire it."

Gabirol, Ibn on wisdom
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"Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings."

Gabirol, Ibn on wisdom   

"One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know."

Galbraith, John Kenneth on wisdom