Quotations about Wisdom

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. ~Elbert Hubbard


We can be Knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom. ~Michel de Montaigne


Wisdom begins at the end. ~Daniel Webster


Patience is the companion of wisdom. ~St. Augustine


Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk. ~Doug Larson


Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it. ~David Star Jordan, The Philosophy of Despair


He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty. ~Mary Wilson Little


Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself. ~Tom Wilson


How can you be a sage if you're pretty? You can't get your wizard papers without wrinkles. ~Bill Veeck


The years teach much which the days never knew. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange - my youth.
~Sara Teasdale


The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ~Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988


Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another. ~Juvenal, Satires


A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top. ~Author Unknown


I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest. ~John Buchan


It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it. ~A.A. Hodge


A child can ask questions that a wise man cannot answer. ~Author Unknown


A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study. ~Chinese Proverb


Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences. ~Norman Cousins


He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom. ~James Gibbons Huneker


Wisdom comes by disillusionment. ~George Santayana


Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it. ~Doug Larson


Some folks are wise and some are otherwise. ~Tobias Smollett


Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar. ~William Wordsworth


The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.


Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson


Wisdom outweighs any wealth. ~Sophocles


If wisdom and diamonds grew on the same tree we could soon tell how much men loved wisdom. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911


The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.. ~William Shakespeare, As You Like It


One must spend time in gathering knowledge to give it out richly. ~Edward C. Steadman


The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. ~William James


It is more easy to be wise for others than for ourselves. ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld


Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe. ~Josh Billings


Wisdom is never on the menu, you have to own the restaurant. ~Carrie Latet


There are subjects in which I wish to become knowledgeable, and subjects in which I wish to remain wise. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


The child, offered the mother's breast,
Will not in the beginning grab it;
But soon it clings to it with zest.
And thus at wisdom's copious breasts
You'll drink each day with greater zest.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Every wise man lives in an observatory. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. ~Martin H. Fischer


A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew. ~Herb Caen


There is a wisdom of the head, and... a wisdom of the heart. ~Charles Dickens


Common-sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge


No man was ever wise by chance. ~Seneca


We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. ~George Bernard Shaw