Wisdom Quotes - Page 80

A wise man will desire no more than what he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contently.

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

All saints have past and all sinners have a future.

Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one strong.

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.

What is it to be wise? 'Tis but to know how little can be known, To see all others' faults, and feel our own.

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.

It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential meaning of the created and the material cosmos. Science without wisdom leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. (p. 4)

And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.

The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility; and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.

A moment's thinking is an hour in words.

Great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot be exaggerated; it is the highest achievement of man.

The world of pure spirits stretches between the divine nature and the world of human beings; because divine wisdom has ordained that the higher should look after the lower, angels execute the divine plan for human salvation: they are our guardians, who free us when hindered and help to bring us home.

Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

The best clue to what a person thinks is what he says.

If the Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.

To know that you are neither the body nor mind, watch yourself steadily and live unaffected by your body and mind, completely aloof, as if you were dead. It means you have no vested interests, either in the body or in the mind.

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. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.

Wisdom is knowing what you don't know.

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.

Mama used to say, you have to know someone a thousand days before you can glimpse her soul.

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

The sea does not contain all the pearls, the earth does not enclose all the treasures, and the flint-stone does not inclose all the diamonds, since the head of man encloses wisdom.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his hear.