Wisdom
526 quotes: 35 by Keith Craft, 491 from other voices.
Other voices on Wisdom
- If you expect the world to be fair with you because you are fair, you're fooling yourself. That's like expecting the lion not to eat you because you didn't eat him.
- If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
- If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth – only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.
- If you should fail ten times, do not be disheartened; if you should fail a hundred times, rise up and pursue your way; if you should fail a thousand times, do not despair.
- If you want new ideas, read old books.
- If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
- Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
- In a fair gale every fool may sail, but wise behaviour in a storm commends the wisdom of the pilot.
- In a higher world it is otherwise; but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
- In adversity be spirited and firm, and with equal prudence lessen your sail when filled with a too fortunate gale of prosperity.
- In giving advice, seek to help, not please, your friend.
- In my opinion, we might all draw more good from it than we do, and suffer less evil, if we would but take care not to give too much for whistles.
- In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.
- Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.
- Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
- Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
- Intelligence strives to know the answer, wisdom strives to know why the answer matters.
- Intelligent people know how to get what they want. Wise people know what’s worth wanting.
- Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less.
- It is a great blunder in the pursuit of happiness, not to know when we have got it; that is, not to be content with a reasonable and possible measure of it.
- It is a great misfortune not to have mind enough to talk well, nor judgment enough to be silent.
- It is a question not of hope or despair, but of truth; not of optimism nor of Pessimism, but of wisdom. Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
- It is a waste of time to criticize the inevitable.
- It is an excellent rule to be observed in all disputes, that men should give soft words and hard arguments; that they should not so much strive to vex, as to convince an opponent.
- It is better either to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.
- It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.
- It is easy to see, hard to foresee.
- It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated.
- It is foolish to try to live on past experience. It is a very dangerous, if not a fatal habit to judge ourselves to be safe because of something that we felt or did twenty years ago.
- It is never too late to become reasonable and wise.
- It is no great advantage to have a lively wit if exactness be wanting. The perfection of a clock does not consist in its going fast, but in its keeping good time.
- It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.
- It is not enough to know, we must also apply; it is not enough to will, we must also do.
- It is not so important to know everything as to know the exact value of everything, to appreciate what we learn, and to arrange what we know.
- It is not the reading of many books that is necessary to make a man wise and good, but the well-reading of a few.
- It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction.
- It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived — forwards.
- It is the mark of a great man to treat trifles as trifles, and important matters as important.
- It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.