wisdom
|
Wisdom is
not to be obtained from
textbooks,
but must be coined out of
human experience
in the flame of life.
Morris
Raphael Cohen
|
|
|
Seven
characteristics distinguish the wise: they do not speak
in the presence of those wiser than themselves, do not
interrupt,
are not hasty to answer, ask and answer the point,
talk about
first things first and last things last, admit when
they do
not know, and acknowledge the truth.
the
Talmud
|
|
|
The
wise stand out, because they see themselves as part of the Whole.
They shine, because they don't want to impress.
They achieve great things, because they don't look for
recognition.
Their wisdom is contained in what they are, not their opinions.
They refuse to argue, so no-one argues with them.
Lao
Tzu
Youth
is the time to study wisdom;
old age is the time to practice it.
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
|
|
It is noble to seek truth, and it is
beautiful to find it. It is the ancient feeling of
the human heart--that knowledge is better than riches;
and it is deeply and sacredly true.
Sydney Smith
|
|
You
must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your
horizon. The more things you love, the more you are
interested in,
the more you enjoy, the more you are
indignant about--the more you have left when anything
happens.
Ethel Barrymore
|
|
|
Who
is wise?
Those who learn from everyone.
Benjamin
Franklin
|
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
our
current e-zine
-
the
people behind the words
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
|
|
|
Any piece
of knowledge I acquire today has a value at
this moment
exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with
it. Tomorrow,
when I know more, I recall that piece of
knowledge and
use it better.
Mark Van
Doren |
|
The lessons of great men
and
women are lost
unless they
reinforce
upon our minds
the highest demands
which
we make upon ourselves;
they are lost unless they
drive our sluggish wills
forward
in the direction
of
their highest ideas.
Jane
Addams
|
|
Some have narrowed their minds, and
so fettered them with the chains of antiquity
that not
only do they refuse to speak save as the ancients spake,
but they refuse
to think save as the ancients thought. God speaks to us, too, and the best thoughts
are
those now being vouchsafed to us. We will excel the
ancients!
Savonarola
|
|
A book is
the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought
without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without
fear
it will go off in your face. . . It is one of the
few havens remaining
where a person's mind can get both
provocation and privacy.
Edward P.
Morgan
|
|
Wisdom is not finally tested by the
schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not
having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is
its own proof.
Walt Whitman
|
|
Abundance of knowledge does
not teach a person to be wise.
Heraclitus
|
|
|
wisdom
|
The
art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James |
|
The seat
of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart.
We are sure to judge wrong if we do not feel right.
William
Hazlitt
|
|
A wise
person will
make more
opportunities than he or she finds.
Francis Bacon |
|
Give me wisdom over
book knowledge any day. I've spent many years in college--twelve years as a student and
twelve teaching, and
I can say without hesitation that I would prefer the
company of an unschooled wise man or woman to that of a
person who knows much, but feels little. The two
aren't mutually exclusive, of course--many educated
people are also wise, and many unschooled people are also
unfeeling. But it seems that the more knowledge we
have, the more we tend to look at ourselves as knowing
what we need to know, and that couldn't be any further
from the truth.
What I need when I talk to people is
feedback about my life, about me. If I'm to advance
as a human being and become better (which to me means
becoming more useful to my fellow human beings), then I
need feedback that helps me to see what I'm doing right
and what I'm doing wrong. I need a wise person to
tell me that this person's course of action is
ineffective because he or she isn't taking something
important into consideration, to tell me that my words
were too harsh or too soft for a situation, to tell me
that what somebody did to me wasn't at all as I perceived
it, but something different entirely.
Most of all, though, I appreciate the
examples of the wise--the lives they live and the way
they tend to be content with just what they have. They
tend to be much more accepting and understanding, for
they see where people are coming from inside--they're
able to see past the facades and the attention-getting
and know what a person is about.
Wisdom is a quality that I strive
after, and I would rather have a pound of wisdom than a
ton of knowledge. It's too late, though--I already
have a ton of knowledge, and I'm trying my best to purify
it, to take what I need to live a useful life from it and
leave the rest behind, so that I may grow in wisdom and
thus grow in usefulness to my fellow human beings. it
takes a great deal of maple sap to make maple syrup, and
what's not necessary or vital is evaporated as the sap is
boiled down. It's a mistake to think that all of
our knowledge is necessary--we need to let some of it
evaporate as we search for the wisdom that will most help
ourselves and others.
tom walsh |
|
|
|
|
Wisdom sends us back to our
childhood.
Pascal |
Wisdom
outweighs any wealth.
Sophocles
|
There is no happiness where there is no wisdom.
Sophocles |
Science is organized knowledge.
Wisdom is organized life.
Immanuel Kant |
|
|
|
|
There is a great difference
between knowing a thing and understanding it;
you can know a lot and
not really understand anything.
Charles F. Kettering |
|
Just because
your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean
you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
Edward R.
Murrow |
|
Fear is
the main source of superstition,
and one of the main sources of
cruelty.
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand
Russell
|
|
We can be knowledgeable with
other people's knowledge,
but we cannot be wise with other people's wisdom.
Michel de Montaigne |
|
Pure
wisdom always directs itself towards God;
the purest wisdom is knowledge of God.
Lew
Wallace
|
|
|
|
Wisdom is the
reward you get for a lifetime of listening
when you'd have preferred to talk.
Doug Larson
|
|
The
wisdom in the story of the most educated and powerful person
is often not greater than the wisdom in the story of a child,
and the life of a child can teach us as much as the life of a sage.
Rachel
Naomi Remen
|
|
To have lived long
does not
necessarily imply the gathering
of much wisdom and experience. One who has pedaled
twenty-five
thousand miles on a stationary
bicycle has
not circled the globe.
He or she has only
garnered weariness.
Paul Eldridge
|
|
Preconceived notions are the locks
on the door to
wisdom.
Merry Browne |
Time ripens all things.
No one is born wise.
Cervantes |
|
|
The
poor long for riches and the rich for heaven,
but the wise long for a state of tranquility.
Swami Rama |
|
Keep
the gold and keep the silver, but give us wisdom.
Arabian proverb |
|
|
|
If I'm
wise, I won't worry about growing old, for I know that
there's a time for everything. I won't worry about whether
someone likes me or not, for I know that all things can't be.
I won't worry about the things that I don't have, for not
having them diminishes me not one bit. I won't worry about
the future and regret the past, for I know that only the present
moment truly matters, for it's all that we can live. If
I'm wise,
I will keep my eyes open and notice things that other people
pass by or dismiss as trivial. I will stop and smell the flowers
and marvel at the snow and ice. I will give of myself as much
as I can, knowing that in giving comes our true growth. I will
be grateful for each new day of life that I receive, for I know
that each day is a gift, and it's up to me
to make something of that gift.
tom
walsh |
|
Wisdom is
oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.
William
Wordsworth |
|
When
we are relaxed and reasonable content, we are naturally wise. We
accept
that life is unpredictable, unreliable. We say jokingly or
philosophically, "Nothing is
sure except death and taxes," or "God willing and the creek don't
rise," reminding
each other that, notwithstanding the level of planning, we are
continually dealing
with being surprised. We get startled. We recover.
We are disappointed.
We adjust. Mostly--with Wisdom intact--we manage.
Sylvia
Boorstein
|
|
We
do not receive wisdom--
we must discover it
for ourselves,
after
a journey through the
wilderness which no one
else
can make for us,
which no one can spare
us, for our wisdom
is
the point of view from
which we come at last
to regard
the world.
Marcel Proust
|
|
|
|
Wisdom is not book learning but, rather, a quality
or state of knowing
what is true or right coupled with the judgment to discern
constructive action. Wisdom is the insight and intuition
contained in the
proverbial still, small voice that only a quiet mind can hear and
know.
Sue Patton Thoele
|
|
Be happy.
It's one way of being wise.
Colette |
|
If
facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then
the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile
soil in which the seeds must grow.
Rachel Carson |
|
|
|
Wisdom
comes most easily to those who have the courage to embrace
life
without judgment and are willing to not know, sometimes
for a long time.
It requires us to be more fully and
simply alive than we have been taught to
be. It may
require us to suffer. But ultimately we will be more
than we
were when we began. There is the seed of a
greater wholeness in everyone.
Rachel
Naomi Remen
|
|
I was walking along the river and I saw a little old
man. No teeth--really
what we would call dirty, because we're clean--you know, it's all
relative--
drinking a bottle of cheap wine, eating a piece of cheese, with a big
grin
on his face. I almost passed him by. He said, "Good
morning, son."
Anyone who calls me "son" is my buddy. So I sat down
and we started
rapping. We shared the wine, we shared the cheese, and we also
shared
philosophy. I said to this man "You know, you look so happy
and contented
and centered and peaceful. Do you have a secret to
life?" He said,
without a moment's hesitation, "Indeed, I do."
I said, "Would you share it with me?"
"Of course, son." He said, "If you want to live
happy all of your life, always
keep your mind full and your bowels empty."
Now, there's wisdom!
Nobody
asked him to a brain bank! They should have!
Leo Buscaglia
|
|
All truly wise
thoughts have been thought already thousands of times;
but to make them truly ours, we must think them over and over
again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
|
|
|
The Delphic
Oracle said that I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is
because I alone of all the Greeks know that I know nothing.
Socrates |
|
It is impossible to live pleasurably without living
wisely, well and justly,
and impossible to live wisely, well and justly without living
pleasurably.
Epicurus |
|
|
|
Knowledge
can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can
find it, live it,
be fortified by it, do wonders through it,
but one cannot communicate
and teach it.
Herman Hesse |
|
|
We
have some
inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is
through the sale of books, either physical copies
or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the
online reader). All of the money that we earn
through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction! |
|
|
The wisdom that comes from
having experienced heartbreak cannot
be bequeathed; it can only be gained through experience. And
having
truly felt it, we are far more likely to have compassion for
others. Anything
that takes us close to true compassion takes us closer to what will
one day
be an experience of even greater joy.
Marianne
Williamson |
|
We see
then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more
durable
than the monuments of power, or of the hands.
For have not the
verses of Homer
continued twenty-five
hundred years, or more,
without the loss of a syllable or
letter;
during which time infinite
palaces, temples,
castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?
Francis
Bacon |
|
There
are two goddesses in your heart. The Goddess of Wisdom and
the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first,
and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money.
But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess
of Wisdom, giver her all your love and attention, and the Goddess
of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.
Joe Vigil |
wisdom
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
our
current e-zine
-
the
people behind the words
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
|
|
|