“We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.”
“The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.”
“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”
“Follow then the shining ones, the wise, the awakened, the loving, for they know how to work and forbear.”
“A wise man is he who does not grieve for the thing which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
“Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.”
“That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.”
“The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.”
“This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.”
“There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.”
“Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.”
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”
“We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.”
“A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.”
“As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.”
“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.”
“A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.”
“Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.”
“No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, --something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.”
“As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.”
“The live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.”
“The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.”
“It may serve as a comfort to us, in all our calamities and afflictions, that he that loses anything and gets wisdom by it is a gainer by the loss.”
“He alone is wise who can accommodate himself to all contingencies of life; but the fool contends, and struggling, like a swimmer, against the stream.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.”
“I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.”
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
“The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.”