Wise Quotes - Page 28

Since the fabric of the universe is most perfect and the work of a most wise Creator, nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear ... there is absolutely no doubt that every affect in the universe can be explained satisfactorily from final causes, by the aid of the method of maxima and minima, as it can be from the effective causes themselves ... Of course, when the effective causes are too obscure, but the final causes are readily ascertained, the problem is commonly solved by the indirect method.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

I was always an unusual girl. My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean.

One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.

If we are going to be wise, spiritual people prepared to meet the crises of our age, we must be a studying, learning community that values the life of the mind

Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

He who is virtuous is wise; and he who is wise is good; and he who is good is happy.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

One fool can ask more questions in a minute than 12 wise men can answer in an hour.

Life is like any other contact sport. You may encounter hardships of one sort or another. Wise people find happiness not in the absence of such hardships, but in their ability to understand them when they occur.

There's the 5% of the people that are wise and righteous and I'd definitely be amongst them, building, communicating, and continuing to try and figure out how we can awaken the 85%. The 85% are walking around [like] cattle, not realizing the things we do, the violence we do; you see people falling victim to all sorts of unnecessary things because they just don't know the way and nobody is showing them the way.

We are called to reach out to those who find themselves in the existential peripheries of our societies and to show particular solidarity with the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: the poor, the disabled, the unborn and the sick, migrants and refugees, the elderly and the young who lack employment.

Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?

Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.

A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.

It’s not like your soul gets older. It gets wiser.

A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.

No matter the barbs of fate that frustrate you, no matter how stacked against you the cards of fortune. . . . There is a liberating law in the universe, and you can become the highest of the high, wisest of the wise.

The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.