Wisdom Quotes

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. this is my symphony.

~ William Ellery Channing

To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality. The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

~ Sengcan

Whoever is full of wisdom is naturally compassionate; in fact we recognize that someone has gained spiritual wisdom by seeing their compassionate behavior. . . . Individuals and countries with power need to develop wisdom and compassion, for without these attributes, there is a danger that the power will be used to oppress and exploit others. (31)

~ Ravi Ravindra

One true king knew when to step aside and give up the reins of power—to remove his crown and relinquish his kingdom—all for the sake of glimpsing, just once in a lifetime, the face of a holy child.He was the Fourth to follow the Star.His gift was a secret.The rest of his journey is unknown.

~ Vera Nazarian

We are much beholden to Machiavelli and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do . For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, 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. Nay, an honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge of evil.

~ Francis Bacon

To have opinions is to sell out to yourself. To have no opinion is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.

~ Fernando Pessoa

Any man who has got himself set over others and don't have any responsibility to something bigger than him is a son of a bitch.

~ Oakley Hall

When two wise men are blaming one another,then time has come for you to be the third one.

~ Toba Beta

The only way to heal yourself was to understand. Understand the love or the hate or the cowardice, or the impulsiveness, the lack of will of the one who hurt you--the circumstances that twisted them, the influences that warped them. And when you forgot yourself and saw the others with pitying comprehension, saw their tortured motives, a white, healing peace descended upon you. Your betrayal became an impersonal one, like a bridge giving way when you crossed it, lightning, a motor collision--you were in the way and you were damaged--that was all. It wasn't meant for you. When you understood, you were released into a new freedom and wisdom.

~ Mary Schumann

God teaches the soul by pains and obstacles, not by ideas.

~ Jean-Pierre De Caussade

Right now, just speak gently your words of wisdom to the youngsters.Sooner or later, those words will arrive at the right place in their hearts.

~ Toba Beta

No shortcut to wisdom.No tollways to be wise.

~ Toba Beta

Do not ever go out of yourself because you will get lost even from your life.

~ Sorin Cerin

...freedom can be a full-time job if you let it.

~ Pearl Cleage

Man will never reach the higher wisdom,If he can't yet accept the pain of change.

~ Toba Beta

. . . I had found the edge. The place where you unstrap all your fastenings to the earth, to what you are what you have been, where you flame out on the edge of the spheres, and the sun and moon become eclipsed and the world below is as dead and remote and without interest as if it were glazed with ice.

~ James Lee Burke

I wrote David because it seemed to me that children, who can love a book more passionately than any grown person, got such a lot of harmless entertainment and not enough real, valuable literature.

~ Anne Holm

Insults sting but a little when they stem from a man's ignorance.

~ Susan Wiggs

Vulnerability really means to be strong and secure enough within yourself that you are able to walk outside without your armor on. You are able to show up in life as just you. That is genuine strength and courage. Armor may look tough, but all it does is mask insecurity and fear.

~ Alaric Hutchinson

If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.

~ Johan Huizinga

Relationships are steppingstones for the evolution of our consciousness. Each interaction we have, be it one of joy or contrast, allows us to learn more about who we are and what we want in this lifetime. They bring us into greater alignment…as long as we continue to move forward and do not get attached to hurt, anger, or being a victim.

~ Alaric Hutchinson

The possibility of the dream gives strength.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Expectation has brought me disappointment. Disappointment has brought me wisdom. Acceptance, gratitude and appreciation have brought me joy and fulfilment.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Love is being able to view a situation without adding duality to it.

~ Alaric Hutchinson

Wenn du weißt, behaupte, dass du es weißt. Und wenn du etwas nicht weißt, gib zu, dass du es nicht weißt. Das ist Wissen.

~ Confucius

A primary requirement in every enterprise in habit-formation is self-confidence.

~ Ralph Alfred Habas

We don't notice things change. We know that things change, we've been told since childhood that things change, we've witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we're still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes--or we search for change in all the wrong places.

~ Arkady Strugatsky

For what are in reality the things we call ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Virtue,’ ‘Heroism,’ ‘sublime hours,’ and ‘great moments of life,’ but the moments when we have more or less issued forth from ourselves, and have been able to halt, be it only for an instant, on the step of one of the eternal gates whence we see that the faintest cry, the most colourless thought, and most nerveless gestures do not drop into nothingness; …

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We can't just restrict ourselves to what we know, because we are talking about the unknown.

~ Belsebuub

Never underestimate yourself when you do what is right. Never overestimate yourself when you do what is wrong.

~ Roy Bennett

Love is supposed to lift you up, not hold you down. It is supposed to push you forward, not hold you back.

~ Suzy Kassem

Die Welt ist von Narren geschaffen, damit Weise in ihr Leben.

~ Oscar Wilde

When we choose to stay down, we are in reality confusing wisdom with cowardice. When we choose to stand back up, we are using wisdom to overcome cowardice.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

~ Plutarch

God grant ... that he may learn to understand in time, that whoso is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed.

~ Sigrid Undset

You were not just blessed for yourself,your were blessed to be a blessing toothers.

~ Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

The greatest solution of all is to live and work in partnership with yourself, your family and friends, your work and community, your nation, your world, nature, and spirit.

~ Marc Allen

Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules,Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools.

~ Voltaire

I don't know what to say to fill the silence. I don't know how to fix this. It seems wrong to leave him, but I have to. There's no compromise, no alternative. Things just weren't meant to be, which seems like a pansy-ass thing to say, until it happens to you.

~ H.m. Ward

I see at last that all the knowledgeI wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darknessAnd we call it wisdom. It is pain.

~ Randall Jarrell