Quotes about wisdom

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

— Karl Kraus

It is more easy to be wise for others than for ourselves.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd preferred to talk.

— Doug Larson

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

— Robert E. Lee

It may serve as a comfort to us, in all our calamities and afflictions, that he that loses anything and gets wisdom by it is a gainer by the loss.

— Sir Roger L'Estrange

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

— Samuel Levenson

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.

— Martin Luther

A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.

— Niccolo Machiavelli

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

— Maurice Maeterlinck

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, -- every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.

— Orison Swett Marden

Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one's being.

— Orison Swett Marden

By the time your life is finished, you will have learned just enough to begin it well.

— Eleanor Marx

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

— H. L. Mencken

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.

— John Stuart Mill

Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning.

— Chuck Noll

Behold, my son, with what little wisdom the world is ruled.

— Count Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna

Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable.

— John Patrick

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

— Phaedrus

The days that are still to come are the wisest witnesses.

— Pindar

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

— Plato

The wisest have the most authority.

— Plato

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

— Plato

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

— Titus Maccius Plautus

No man is wise enough by himself.

— Titus Maccius Plautus

By others faults the wise correct their own.

— Proverb

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

— African Proverb

The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.

— Camerounian Proverb

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books.

— Chinese Proverb

Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men.

— Chinese Proverb

Deep doubts, deep wisdom; small doubts, little wisdom.

— Chinese Proverb

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

— Danish Proverb

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

— German Proverb

Everyone is wise until he speaks.

— Irish Proverb

He alone is wise who can accommodate himself to all contingencies of life; but the fool contends, and struggling, like a swimmer, against the stream.

— Latin Proverb

The foolish sayings of a rich man pass for wise ones.

— Spanish Proverb

Even though you know a thousand things, ask the man who knows one.

— Turkish Proverb

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

— Yiddish Proverb

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

— Francis Quarles

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

— Philippe Quinault

Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.

— Theodore Roosevelt

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

— Helen Rowland

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

— Bertrand Russell

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

— Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

— George Santayana

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

— William Saroyan

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

— Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life -- in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

— Seneca

To be wise and love exceeds man's might.

— William Shakespeare

So wise so young, they say, do never live long.

— William Shakespeare

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

— George Bernard Shaw

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.

— Samuel Smiles

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

— Samuel Smiles

Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.

— Samuel Smiles

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

— Tobias G. Smollett

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

— Socrates

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

— Socrates

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

— Socrates

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

— Sophocles

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it

— Konstantin Stanislavisky

The wise man avoids evil by anticipating it.

— Publilius Syrus

Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.

— The Talmud

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

— The Talmud

The end result of wisdom is... good deeds.

— The Talmud

Wisdom is perishable. Unlike information or knowledge, it cannot be stored in a computer or recorded in a book. It expires with each passing generation.

— Sid Taylor

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

— Henry David Thoreau

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

— James Thurber

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.

— Count Leo Tolstoy

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.

— Mark Twain

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

— Source Unknown

If wisdom were on sale in the open market, the stupid would not even ask the price.

— Source Unknown

Many people might have attained wisdom had they not assumed they already had it.

— Source Unknown

The best mind might be the wisest mind if it were a mind alone that produces wisdom.

— Source Unknown

The wise man says it cannot be done, but the fool goes and does it.

— Source Unknown

What a wonderful world this would be if there were as many wise people as there are clever people.

— Source Unknown

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.

— Source Unknown

Wise men are not always silent, but they know when to be.

— Source Unknown

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

— Source Unknown

You can buy education, but wisdom is a gift from God.

— Source Unknown

Understanding the limitations of human beings as well as understanding your own is the beginning of true wisdom.

— Source Unknown

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

— Voltaire

Committing a great truth to memory is admirable; committing it to life is wisdom.

— William A. Ward

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.

— Thomas J. Watson

Wisdom begins at the end.

— Daniel Webster

Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.

— Ziggy

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed Wisdom. And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

— Andrew Young