Quotations and Poems

» “We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.”
– James Truslow Adams

»  ”Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.”
– Aristophanes

»  ”Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know — and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know — even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction — than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.”
– Isaac Asimov

»  ”The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.”
– Marcus Aurelius

»  ”In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool.”
– Rabbi Ben Azai

»  ”There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.”
– Francis Bacon

»  ”Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.”
– Francis Bacon

»  ”For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.”
– Francis Bacon

»  ”Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.”
– Basho

»  ”Wise men still seek Him today.”
– Dan Bell

»  ”When you move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment and aversion alike, there comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and you life in the wisdom of the Self.”
– Bhagavad Gita

»  ”The live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.”
– Bhagavad Gita

»  ”Action should culminate in wisdom.”
– Bhagavad Gita

»  ”He that walketh with wise men shall be wise.”
– Bible

»  ”Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all your getting get understanding.”
– Bible

»  ”Better to get wisdom than gold.”
– Bible

»  ”Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. [Proverbs 3:13-15]“
– Bible

»  ”In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
– Bible

»  ”So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.”
– Bible

»  ”The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise. [Proverbs 15: 31]“
– Bible

»  ”The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. [Psalms 19:7]“
– Bible

»  ”The wisdom of a learned man comet by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. [Ecclesiasticus 38:25]“
– Bible

»  ”Through wisdom is a house built; and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge shall every room be filled with precious and pleasant riches.”
– Bible

»  ”Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.”
– Bible

»  ”Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you stemma to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. [1 Corinthians 3:18-19]“
– Bible

»  ”Wisdom is better than weapons of war. [9:18b, Ecclesiastes]“
– Bible

»  ”Some folks are wise and some otherwise.”
– Josh Billings

»  ”The price of wisdom is eternal thought.”
– Frank Birch

»  ”The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”
– William Blake

»  ”The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”
– William Blake

»  ”What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.”
– William Blake

»  ”The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.”
– Nicholas Boileau

»  ”The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

»  ”The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.”
– Hal Borland

»  ”True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.”
– E. S. Bouton

»  ”Mixing one’s wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.”
– Bertolt Brecht

»  ”As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.”
– Buddha

»  ”Follow then the shining ones, the wise, the awakened, the loving, for they know how to work and forbear.”
– Buddha

»  ”If I don’t have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.”
– Leo Buscaglia

»  ”Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.”
– Samuel Butler

»  ”The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.”
– Thomas Carlyle

»  ”Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.”
– Thomas Carlyle

»  ”Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.”
– Cato The Elder

»  ”Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.”
– Miguel De Cervantes

»  ”The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.”
– Geoffrey Chaucer

»  ”Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil — not the strength to choose between the two.”
– John Cheever

»  ”Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.”
– Georges Clemenceau

»  ”The extreme limit of wisdom –that’s what the public calls madness.”
– Jean Cocteau

»  ”A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.”
– John Churton Collins

»  ”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.”
– Charles Caleb Colton

»  ”Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.”
– Confucius

»  ”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

»  ”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

»  ”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.”
– Cyril Connolly

»  ”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.”
– Calvin Coolidge

»  ”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.”
– Stephen R. Covey

»  ”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.”
– Ralph J. Cudworth

»  ”All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.”
– Alexandre Dumas

»  ”History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”
– Abba Eban

»  ”Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.”
– Queen Elizabeth

»  ”Life is a festival only to the wise.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

»  ”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.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

»  ”There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

»  ”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.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

»  ”Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

»  ”A wise man is he who does not grieve for the thing which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
– Epictetus

»  ”He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God.”
– Epictetus

»  ”Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.”
– Euripides

»  ”Wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech.”
– Evangel

»  ”Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning.”
– Bergen Evans

»  ”Timing, degree and conviction are the three wise men in this life.”
– R. I. Fitzhenry

»  ”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.”
– St. Francis of Assisi

»  ”Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.”
– Felix Frankfurter

»  ”The doors of wisdom are never shut.”
– Benjamin Franklin

»  ”Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.”
– Benjamin Franklin

»  ”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.”
– Sigmund Freud

»  ”Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.”
– Ibn Gabirol

»  ”The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.”
– Ibn Gabirol

»  ”One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith

»  ”It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

»  ”The man who questions opinions is wise. The man who quarrels with facts is a fool.”
– Frank Garbutt

»  ”Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.”
– Kahlil Gibran

»  ”Wisdom is found only in truth.”
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

»  ”Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.”
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

»  ”This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.”
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

»  ”Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, and fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.”
– Oliver Goldsmith

»  ”Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.”
– Oliver Goldsmith

»  ”The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he’s completely draped in it. Then he’ll stand up and go hey, I’m Vine Man.”
– Jack Handey

»  ”Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it.”
– Hermann Hesse

»  ”I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.”
– Hermann Hesse

»  ”There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.”
– Edward Hoagland

»  ”Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.”
– Thomas Hobbes

»  ”The wisdom of others remains dull till it is writ over with our own blood. We are essentially apart from the world; it bursts into our consciousness only when it sinks its teeth and nails into us.”
– Eric Hoffer

»  ”It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

»  ”Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.”
– Herbert Clark Hoover

»  ”Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.”
– Horace

»  ”The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
– William James

»  ”Wisdom is learning what to overlook.”
– William James

»  ”He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.”
– Samuel Johnson

»  ”Wisdom overcomes fortune.”
– Decimus Junius Juvenalis Juvenal

»  ”Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.”
– Karl Kraus

»  ”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

»  ”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 is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.”
– Francois De La Rochefoucauld

»  ”It is more easy to be wise for others than for ourselves.”
– 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’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.”
– Samuel Levenson

»  ”He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.”
– Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

»  ”Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one’s being.”
– Orison Swett Marden

»  ”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

»  ”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

»  ”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

»  ”Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.”
– 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

»  ”The wisest have the most authority.”
– Plato

»  ”Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.”
– Plato

»  ”Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
– Plato

»  ”No man is wise enough by himself.”
– Titus Maccius Plautus

»  ”Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.”
– 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

»  ”Deep doubts, deep wisdom; small doubts, little wisdom.”
– Chinese 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

»  ”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

»  ”So wise so young, they say, do never live long.”
– William Shakespeare

»  ”To be wise and love exceeds man’s might.”
– 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

»  ”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

»  ”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

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

»  ”The end result of wisdom is… good deeds.”
– The Talmud

»  ”Who is wise? One who learns from all.”
– The Talmud

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

»  ”Wise men are not always silent, but they know when to be.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”What a wonderful world this would be if there were as many wise people as there are cleaver people.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”Understanding the limitations of human beings as well as understanding your own is the beginning of true wisdom.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”The wise man says it cannot be done, but the fool goes and does it.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”The best mind might be the wisest mind if it were a mind alone that produces wisdom.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”You can buy education, but wisdom is a gift from God.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”Many people might have attained wisdom had they not assumed they already had it.”
– 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.”
– Woodrow T. Wilson

»  ”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

»  ”If you wish to know the road up the mountain, ask the man who goes back and forth on it.”
– Zenrin