Wisdom Quotes

Our age has robbed millions of the simplicity of ignorance, and has so far failed to lift them to the simplicity of wisdom.

Robertson Davies

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

W. Somerset Maugham

One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed... When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

Hegel

The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators.

David Hume

Perhaps I'd been a slow developer, but I was well into my forties before I realized that you don't have to comply with a request just because it's reasonable or reasonably put. Age is the great dis-obliger. You can be yourself and say no.

Ian Mcewan

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It seems wisest to assume the worst from the beginning...and let anything better come as a surprise.

Jules Verne

Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.

Charles Kingsley

In the search for understanding and awakening we are drawn to those teachings that convey the deepest wisdom with the greatest beauty.

Frances Vaughn Roger Walsh

A wise man knows when to stay silent. However, a wiser man of faith knows that sometimes words can win the battle when all odds stand against you.

Shannon L. Alder

Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom. But I include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the bourgeois in coats. It is we and we alone, that is to say the literary men, who are the people, or to say it better: the tradition of humanity.

Gustave Flaubert

We are as we are. How can you claim to know what life I was meant to lead, let alone threaten to force me into it? All your quibbling is nonsense. As well forbid your nose to snuff, or your ears to hear. We are as we do.

Robin Hobb

Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.

Bible

The life you never live is greater than the wealth you never know

Benny Bellamacina

Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.

R. Scott Bakker

The knowledge that unites love and wisdom, that uplifts the spirit is spirituality. The knowledge which gives you a broad vision and a big heart is spirituality.

Ravi Shankar (spiritual leader)

Nothing in this world is wrong, Unless, YOU consider it Wrong!

Dhruv Gandhi

The Master insisted that what he taught was nothing, what he did was nothing. His disciples gradually discovered that Wisdom comes to those who learn nothing, unlearn everything. That transformation is the consequence not of something done, but of something dropped.

Anthony de Mello

When you've learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn't, you've got wisdom and understanding.-Aunt Jimsie

L.M. Montgomery

As long as you know who you are, and see what makes you happy, it doesn't matte how others see you

Wendy Mass