Selected wisdom quotes

1. Silence sweeter is than speech.

2. Reason well from the beginning and then there will never be any need to look back with confusion and doubt.

3. Just as rust, which arose from the iron itself, wears out the iron, likewise, performing an action without examination would destroy us by projecting us into a negative state of existence.

4. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

5. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

6. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

7. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

8. The greatest science in the world; in heaven and on earth; is love.

9. If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

10. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.

11. He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.

12. I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

13. What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.

14. Don't leave home without your sword - your intellect.

15. Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.

16. Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

17. As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.

18. Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.

19. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

20. Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

21. Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

22. From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.

23. What makes bitter things sweet? Hunger.

24. All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river.

25. When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.

26. Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.

27. It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

28. Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

29. Only a fool thinks price and value are the same.

30. Education is the best provision for old age.

31. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

32. It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

33. The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

34. The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

35. The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

36. Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there In small bright specks upon the visible side Of our strange being's party-coloured web.

37. Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

38. When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time.

39. Sometimes the best way to be useful is to get out of somebody's way.

40. If only our great thinkers could learn to talk, and our great talkers could learn to think.

41. It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him.

42. It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

43. Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.

44. One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

45. I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.

46. In idle wishes fools supinely stay; Be there a will, and wisdom finds a way.

47. Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

48. The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.

49. There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.

50. It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.

51. [W]e avenge intelligence when we deceive a fool, and the victory is worth the trouble[.]

52. When you fool a fool, you strike a blow for intelligence.

53. When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.

54. Plato was right, but not quite right.

55. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

56. Now it has appeared to me unfair that humanity should be engaged perpetually in calling all those things bad which have been good enough to make other things better, in everlastingly kicking down the ladder by which it has climbed. It has appeared to me that progress should be something else besides a continual parricide; therefore I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.

57. To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

58. 'I'm afraid I'm a practical man,' said the doctor with gruff humour, 'and I don't bother much about religion and philosophy.' 'You'll never be a practical man till you do,' said Father Brown. 'Look here, doctor; you know me pretty well; I think you know I'm not a bigot. You know I know there are all sorts in all religions; good men in bad ones and bad men in good ones.

59. What an elder sees sitting, the young can't see standing.

60. Many years ago a very wise man named Bernard Baruch took me aside and put his arm around my shoulder. 'Harpo my boy,' he said, 'I'm going to give you three pieces of advice, three things you should always remember.' My heart jumped and I glowed with expectation. I was going to hear the magic password to a rich, full life from the master himself. 'Yes sir?' I said. And he told me the three things. I regret that I've forgotten what they were.

61. I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

62. The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign.

63. Wisdom is one thing - to know how to make true judgment, how all things are steered through all things.

64. I have only one eye,- I have a right to be blind sometimes . . . I really do not see the signal!

65. You have to learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.

66. The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

67. It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.

68. Though old the thought and oft expressed, 'Tis his at last who says it best.

69. What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us!

70. Nemo intrat in caelum nisi per philosophiam.

71. 'The deeper our insight into the methods of nature . . . the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us.'

72. 'Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil -- not the strength to choose between the two.'

73. Is it not excessively ridiculous to seek the good opinion of those whom you would never wish to be like?

74. License they mean when they cry, Liberty! For who loves that must first be wise and good.

75. I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

76. Man always travels along precipices. His truest obligation is to keep his balance.

77. Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it.

78. We shall be remembered in history as the most cruel, and therefore the most unwise, generation of men that ever yet troubled the earth: - the most cruel in proportion to their sensibility, - the most unwise in proportion to their science. No people, understanding pain, ever inflicted so much: no people, understanding facts, ever acted on them so little.

79. I speak about universal evolution and teleological evolution, because I think the process of evolution reflects the wisdom of nature. I see the need for wisdom to become operative. We need to try to put all of these things together in what I call an evolutionary philosophy of our time.

80. The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.'

81. Genuinely good remarks surprise their author as well as his audience.

82. The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

83. There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.

84. People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

85. The integral approach is committed to the full spectrum of consciousness as it manifests in all its extraordinary diversity. This allows the integral approach to recognize and honor the Great Holarchy of Being first elucidated by the perennial philosophy and the great wisdom traditions in general.... The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well.

86. The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things, and of the genius of the age in which we live.

87. Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

88. He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.

89. We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure.

90. Go - take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and What men live by. When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven.

91. The only thing that we know is that we know nothing - and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.

92. There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

93. For most men (till by losing rendered sager) Will back their own opinions by a wager.

94. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

95. Hindu Dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems. The deeper you dive the more treasures you find.

96. Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

97. Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

98. Physician of the Iron Age, Goethe has done his pilgrimage. He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear - And struck his finger on the place, And said - Thou ailest here, and here.

99. 'Never ask for anything! Never for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. They'll make the offer themselves, and give everything themselves.'

100. Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.