Wisdom Quotes

The extreme limit of wisdom - - That is what the public calls madness.

Jean Cocteau

Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.

Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fea

No man is wiser for his learning, wit and wisdom are born with a man.

John Selden

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Aristotle

A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom. - From Live Without Principle.

Henry David Thoreau

The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

Pierre Abelard

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

Count Axel Gustafson Oxenstierna

Common sense in an uncommon degree and is what the world calls wisdom.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky

Once I had the strength but no wisdom now I have the wisdom but no strength.

Persian Prove

For the uncontrolled there is no wisdom. For the uncontrolled there is no concentration, and for him without concentration, there is no peace. And for the unpeaceful how can there ever be happiness?

Unknown, The Bhagavad Gita

They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

Confucius, Analects

Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means.

Francis Hutcheson

Perhaps we are wiser, less foolish and more far - Seeing than we were two hundred years ago. But we are still imperfect in all these things, and since the turn of the century it has been remarked that neither wisdom nor virtue have increased as rapidly as the need for both.

Joseph Wood Krutch

There is a wisdom of the head, and... a wisdom of the heart.

Charles Dickens

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

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Socrates

Science at best is not wisdom it is knowledge. Wisdom is knowledge tempered with judgment.

Lord Ritchie - Calde

An nescis mi fili, quantilla prudentia regitur orbis? Dost thou not know, my son, with what little wisdom the world is governed?

Count Oxenstierna, letter to his son, 1648

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen

Who knows why we live, and struggle, and die... Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.

Alan Stewart Paton

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Robert Frost

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. Observe how the greatest minds yield in some degree to the superstitions of their age.

Henry David Thoreau

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

H. L. Mencken

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom No wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise.

Sophocles

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone? The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.

Lin Yutang, O Magazine, October 2002

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.

Wilfrid Sheed

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to utter hopelessness and despair, the other to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen

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

John Patrick

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

Felix Frankfurte

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - - And stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit on a hot stove lid again - - And that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

Mark Twain

Data is not information, Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not understanding, Understanding is not wisdom.

Cliff Stoll & Gary Schubert

Gray hair is a sign of age, not wisdom.

Greek Prove

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.

Henry Mille

Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Kahlil Gibran

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

Some people take more care to hide their wisdom than their folly.

Jonathan Swift