Quotes about wisdom

For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.

It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.

Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, , wisdom, , and this post-heroic absence of agitation.

The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; ... the wise does neither.

[A]ge is beauty. ...[M]y instinct is to value distilled thought over newer thinking, regardless of its apparent sophistication—another reason to accumulate the hoary volumes by my bedside... For an idea to have survived so many cycles is indicative of its relative fitness. Noise, at least some noise, was filtered out. ...[P]rogress means that some new information is better than past information, not that the average of new information will supplant past information...

"'A woman's wisdom is her gift to women,'" Peggy quoted. "'Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to God.'"

We are all fools when one wise man appears.

I interpreted all you did as weakness — but I should have known that it was wisdom and strength, freely shared with all of us, even the ones who don't deserve it.

What is the wisdom of a book compared with the wisdom of an angel?