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You are wise to climb Mt. Fuji, but a fool to do it twice.
-Japanese Proverb
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Just as a fire is covered by smoke and a mirror is obscured by dust, just as the embryo rests deep within the womb, wisdom is hidden by selfish desire.
-Bhagavad Gita
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If only we were wiser or better people, perhaps the gods would explain to us the mad, unbearable things they do.
-Orson Scott Card
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"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
-Confucius
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Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.
-Norman Cousins
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Wisdom is a variable possession. Every man is wise when pursued by a mad dog, fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
-Robertson Davies, Marchbanks' Almanac
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Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Clubs," Society and Solitude, 1870
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"Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents."
-Kahlil Gibran, "Between Reality and Fantasy"
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Wisdom is one thing, to know how to make true judgment, how all things are steered through all things.
-Heraclitus
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"It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own."
-W. R. [William Ralph] Inge
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When the superior scholar hears of Tao, he diligently practises it. When the average scholar hears of Tao, he sometimes retains it, sometimes loses it. When the inferior scholar hears of Tao, he loudly laughs at it. Were it not thus ridiculed, it would not be worthy of the name of Tao.
-Lao-Tzu, Source: The Sayings of Lao-Tzu, Lionel Giles translation [1905]
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
-Walter Lippmann
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"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
-Naguib Mahfouz
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We are to get wisdom and understanding, yet we are not to lean on it apart from the Lord.
-John C. Maxwell
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"The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it."
-Jean Paul
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"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
-Socrates
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"Wisdom begins in wonder."
-Socrates
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"Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way."
-Sophocles
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Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
-Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird, Doubleday 76
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Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall [lines 143-144]
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The temporary good is enemy to the permanent best.
-Bill Wilson
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"These are weighty secrets, and we must whisper them."
-Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, Secrets
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Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
-Lin Yutang
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Books about Wisdom
