Quotes on Wisdom

Freedom is participation in power.

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.

She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost.

People with virtue must speak out; People who speak are not all virtuous.

Conventionality is not morality.

If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.

Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.

What difference does it make after all?--anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.

Distance lends enchantment to the view.

The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death. But who wants to die?

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.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.

Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.

We have a right to believe whatever we want, but not everything we believe is right.

The past has no power over the present moment.

The world has a soul and whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of many things.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

None of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God — acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him.