Wisdom Quotations - Quotations

Guest Author - Danielle Hollister

"Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place."
-- Abigail Van Buren
"I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not."
-- Akhenaton
"Anyone can become angry -- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way -- this is not easy."
-- Aristotle
"Before God we are equally wise -- and equally foolish."
-- Albert Einstein
"The wise man does at once what the fool does finally."
-- Baltasar Gracian
"The fool wonders, the wise man asks."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
"The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning…and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom."
-- Bergen Evens
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-- Bertrand Russell
"Do not ask for fulfillment in all your life, but for patience to accept frustration. Do not ask for perfection in all you do, but for the wisdom not to repeat mistakes. Do not ask for more, before saying "Thank You" for what you have already received."
-- Brenda Short
"There is this difference between happiness and wisdom, that he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool."
-- Charles Caleb Colton
"A loving heart is the truest wisdom."
-- Charles Dickens
"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 H. Spurgeon
"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names."
-- Chinese proverb
"Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men."
-- Douglas Bader
"Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means."
-- Francis Hutcheson
"One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything."
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"The wisest mind has something yet to learn."
-- George Santayana
"It's not good for all of our wishes to be fulfilled. Through sickness, we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest."
-- Greek proverb
"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."
-- H. L. Mencken
"It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"The truly generous is the truly wise, and he who loves not others, lives unblest."
-- Henry Home
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
-- Herbert Spencer
"Force without wisdom falls of its own weight."
-- Horace
"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."
-- Immanuel Kant
"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations."
-- Isaac Disraeli
"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience."
-- James Boswell
"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet."
-- James Oppenheim
"People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little."
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau
"A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart."
-- Jonathan Swift
"I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time."
-- Josh Billings
"Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfful to seek other than itself."
-- Kahlil Gibran
"The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own."
-- Lao-tzu
"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
"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take us or spare us."
-- Marcel Proust
Wisdom - Gray Wolf

"Seek always, for by looking for one thing you will surely find another - this is the path to wisdom."
"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."
-- Marilyn vos Savant
"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 on a hot stove-lid; he will never sit on a hot stove-lid again -- and that is well; but also she will never sit on a cold one anymore."
-- Mark Twain
"Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification."
-- Martin H. Fischer
"It is not white hair that engenders wisdom."
-- Menander
"Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom."
-- Myrtle Reed
"Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences."
-- Norman Cousins
"Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish."
-- Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria
"Wise men talk because they have something to say fools, because they have to say something."
-- Plato
"The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The wisest person is not the one who has the fewest failures but the one who turns failures to best account."
-- Richard R. Grant
"Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it."
-- Robbie Gass
"Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain."
-- Robert Gary Lee
"Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child."
-- Ron Wild
"Patience is the companion of wisdom."
-- Saint Augustine
"Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom."
-- Samuel Coleridge
"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery."
-- 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
"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life."
-- Sandra Carey
"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
"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."
-- Socrates (Plato's Apology)
"Wisdom outweighs any wealth."
-- Sophocles
"Too many wish to be happy before becoming wise."
-- Susanne Curchod Necker
"Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
-- T.S. Eliot
"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich."
-- Tao Te Ching
"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom."
-- Theodore Isaac Rubin, M.D.
"Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men."
-- The Talmud
"No man is wise enough by himself."
-- Titus Maccius Plautus
"Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired."
-- Titus Maccius Plautus
"Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself."
-- Tom Wilson
"Understanding is knowing what to do; wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is actually doing it."
-- Tristan Gylberd
"He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today."
-- Tryon Edwards
"A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top."
-- Unknown
"These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future."
-- Vernon Cooper
"All search is vain, until we begin to perceive that wisdom is within ourselves … then we may know the sun is rising, that the morning is breaking for us."
-- Vivekananda
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure."
-- William Saroyan
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."
-- William Shakespeare
"Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is tonic. Tribulation is a test tube."
-- William Arthur Ward
"Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."
-- William Cowper
"I not only use all the brains that I have but all that I can borrow."
-- Woodrow Wilson

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