Quotes on Wisdom

Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate.

No man was ever wise by chance.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

If we are indeed contending for truth and righteousness, let us not tarry till we have talent, or wealth, or any other form of visible power at our disposal; but with such stones as we find in the brook, and with our own usual sling, let us run to meet the enemy.

We need to strengthen such inner values as contentment, patience and tolerance, as well as compassion for others. Keeping in mind that it is expressions of affection rather than money and power that attract real friends, compassion is the key to ensuring our own well-being.

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

Cowards die many times before their actual deaths.

A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

When you see a good man, try to emulate his example, and when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

True devotion is for itself: not to desire heaven nor to fear hell.

Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.

I'm writing this book because we're all going to die.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.

Society is notoriously stupid in its failure to harness the wisdom of older women in everything from television to politics, family life to boardrooms, and here is one reminiscing with honesty and realism about women's particular challenge: to create our professional and financial structures in the same period as our peak fertility.

The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for wisdom, and this means a short roll call of names; Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epicurus, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.