Wisdom Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The anchor of all my dreams is the collective wisdom of mankind as a whole.

From the height of their disillusionment they look down upon those whom they despise as simple souls. For my part I have no sympathy with this outlook. All disenchantment is to me a malady, which, it is true, certain circumstances may render inevitable, but which none the less, when it occurs, is to be cured as soon as possible, not to be regarded as a higher form of wisdom.

Bertrand Russell

Age and truth. Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Then Aragorn was abashed, for he saw the elven-light in her eyes and the wisdom of many days; yet from that hour he loved Arwen Undómiel daughter of Elrond.

J. R. R. Tolkien

We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.

Thomas Jefferson

I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.

Thomas Jefferson

God in his wisdom circumscribed man's vision, and rightly too, for otherwise man's conceit would know no bounds.

Wisdom is the only thing which can relieve us from the sway of the passions and the fear of danger, and which can teach us to bear the injuries of fortune itself with moderation, and which shows us all the ways which lead to tranquility and peace.

The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom thoroughly learned, will never be forgotten.
Science is got by diligence; but Discretion and Wisdom cometh of GOD.

One of the main reasons why the sciences are so poor is that they imagine they are so rich. It isn't their job to throw open the door to infinite wisdom but to put a limit to infinite error.

Galileo speaking

O powerful goodness! Bountiful Father! Merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolution to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return in my power for thy continual favours to me.

Benjamin Franklin

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It is enough.

George Bernard Shaw

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.

There are not a few problems in the natural sciences of which a man cannot speak justly without calling metaphysics to his aid; not technical words about knowing and being, such as make a show in the schools, but that wisdom of thought which was before all physics, lives with it, and will endure after it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher.

Henry David Thoreau

Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.

Michel de Montaigne

For some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, others with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or not without pleasure; while others include also external prosperity. Now … it is not probable that these should be entirely mistaken, but rather that they should be right in at least some one respect or even in most respects.

At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson