Wise Quotes - Page 30

A man remains ignorant because he loves ignorance, and chooses ignorant thoughts; a man becomes wise because he loves wisdom and chooses wise thoughts.

Only fools use their mouth to speak. A smart man uses his brain, and a wise man uses his heart.

When truth presents itself, the wise person see the light, takes it in, and makes adjustments. The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.

We cannot expect to be happy always ... by experiencing evil as well as good we become wise.

If people have a passion for anything they tend to get quite good at it.

Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed. It is irritating to be woken up. That's the reason the wise guru will not attempt to wake people up. I hope I'm going to be wise here and make no attempt whatsoever to wake you up if you are asleep. It is really none of my business, even though I say to you at times, "Wake up!" My business is to do my thing, to dance my dance. If you profit from it fine; if you don't, too bad! As the Arabs say, "The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens."

I'm not really wise. But I can be cranky.

The poor long for riches, the rich long for heaven, but the wise long for a state of tranquility.

Around the world, we see the results of exploitation which destroys much without taking future generations into account. Protecting the world's forests; stemming desertification and erosion; avoiding the spread of toxic substances harmful to man, animals and plants; protecting the atmosphere; all these can be accomplished only through active and wise cooperation, without borders or political power plays.

People don't understand that all presidents, the minute they become president, get a knock at the door. And there's a man there saying, 'Let's talk about your funeral.' At the time I thought, God, that's a terrible thing. Later on, I thought it was pretty wise.

I think a person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave. Work begins when you don't like what you're doing. There's a wise saying: make your hobby your source of income. Then there's no such thing as work, and there's no such thing as getting tired. That's been my own experience. I did just what I wanted to do. It takes a little courage at first, because who the hell wants you to do just what you want to do; they've all got lots of plans for you. But you can make it happen.

The experienced, wise, energetic, intelligent individual functioning in a loose coalition with others in a wide network is far more effective than he is in a tightly organized group.

Neglect starts out as an infection then becomes a disease.

Wise parents know that fighting a teenager, like fighting a riptide, is inviting doom.

Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to the prosaic, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an anthill.

An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.

There needs to be understanding that anger never helps to solve a problem. It destroys our peace of mind and blinds our ability to think clearly. Anger and attachment are emotions that distort our view of reality.

When a person should be spoken with, and you don't speak with them, you lose them. When a person shouldn't be spoken with and you speak to them, you waste your breath. The wise do not lose people, nor do they waste their breath.

Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn't mean that others can't do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training.

Sometimes in our lives we all have pain. We all have sorrow. But if we are wise we know that there's always tomorrow.

There is no object that we see; no action that we do; no good that we enjoy; no evil that we feel, or fear, but we may make some spiritual advantage of all: and he that makes such improvement is wise, as well as pious.

The mouse is wise, but the cat is wiser.

Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools.

The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. There are no words for childhood's dark turns and exhalations. A wise child recognizes it and submits to the necessary consequences. A child who counts the cost is a child no longer.

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.