Wisdom

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

. . . if we have children. When they are just born we do everything for them. We are omnipotent, they are completely dependent on us, but then when they grow up you must take back your influence on them, to give them freedom.

There is no wealth but life.

Water has the capability to spliter: it needs a splash.

It's not who you are, it's what you do that matters

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.

Instead of trying to cover the whole world with leather, put on some sandals.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

In their voices they found themselves.

Nothing is lost, nothing is gained. There is nothing.

Be equal to whatever you meet! That is a better way to react to life. It is accomplished simply by meeting everything in understanding, by demanding understanding from within yourself.

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

An error can never become true however many times you repeat it. The truth can never be wrong, even if no one hears it.

To be affectionately detached—that is a power. That is a wisdom. That is a love greater than any emotional love, a love born of understanding.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

He who angers you conquers you.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafarer on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.

"Wisdom is possible without omniscience."

I gravitate toward gravitas.

The breeze of grace is always blowing; set your sail to catch that breeze.

from Rev. Christopher Chenoweth: "I have said, many times, there are two types of people in this world, vacuums and sprinklers." from -Tirukkural - "What is virtuous conduct? It is never destroying life, for killing leads to every other sin. Of all virtues summed by ancient sages, the foremost are to share one's food and to protect all living creatures." from Swami Vivekananda - "Whenever darkness comes, assert the reality and everything adverse must vanish. For, after all, it is but a dream. Mountain high though the difficulties appear... they are but maya. Fear not - it is banished. Crush it and it vanishes... Go forward. Assert yourself again and again and light must come." from Plato – "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. " from Jimi Hendrix – “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."

“In order to be filled with light I have to take the risk of plugging myself in. The more often I dip into the well of inspiration the more likely I am to be inspired. The seed grows in darkness before the tree bursts forth into the light.”

“I'm with you in suggesting that we integrate our spirituality through symbols, myths, dreams and stories, instead of fixed certainties. For me the problem with fixed certainties is that they become so fixed they're no longer certain (if not certainly wrong). I also believe that spirituality is full of mystery and paradox, which gives me an opportunity to engage in play.”

"One who thinks he knows does not know; one who knows he does not know, knows"

Wisdom is better than might; yet the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heeded. The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war.

Universal does not mean ultimate.

Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we're not sure that we're most sure.

The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.

We only die once, but for such a long time

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.

“Everything that happens to you makes you stronger” isn’t really true. It is what you choose to learn from everything that makes you the person you are today. Every situation presents us with a choice: what will you do with this? Will you learn from this experience, as difficult as it may be, to grow and become a better & stronger person? Or will you assume the victim role, become bitter, and forever blame everyone & everything around you for your life? Everyone is tested; not everyone learns.

3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

The obstacle is the path.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

"Nothing difficult is ever easy"

It is better to read a little and ponder a lot than to read a lot and ponder a little.

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.

I have lost the consolation of faith / though not the ambition to worship.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

I seek great wisdoms, and then find the small ones, unbidden, more profound. Like kindness.

There are stars who's light only reaches the earth long after they have fallen appart. There are people who's remembrance gives light in this world, long after they have passed away. This light shines in our darkest nights on the road we must follow.

All children need a laptop. Not a computer, but a human laptop. Moms, Dads, Grannies and Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles – someone to hold them, read to them, teach them. Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations. Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations of them, their hopes, and their dreams.

You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul's own doing.

With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.

I, Wisdom, am mistress of discretion, the inventor of lucidity of thought. Good advice and sound judgment belong to me.

Religion and wisdom help us accept the shortcomings of reality, either with the prospect of bliss after death or with an approach to life that is conducive to serenity.

God has bestowed upon you intelligence and knowledge. Do not extinguish the lamp of Divine Grace and do not let the candle of wisdom die out in the darkness of lust and error. For a wise man approaches with his torch to light up the path of mankind.

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.

One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

Be sincere; be brief; be seated.

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

It is better to be wise, and not to seem so, than to seem wise, and not be so; yet men, for the most part, desire the contrary.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one's being.

There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk.

The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man.

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.

The man who questions opinions is wise. The man who quarrels with facts is a fool.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness.

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.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war.

Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.

They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

It is not the "courage to be" that we must develop as much as the "courage to become." We are responsible for our destiny. The meaning of life is not located in some hidden crevice in the womb of nature but is created by free persons, who are aware that they are responsible for their own futures and have the courage to take this project into their own hands.

Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces our death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom - desire coordinated in the light of all experience - can tell us when to heal and when to kill.

Antiphon, as another man gets pleasure from a good horse, or a dog, or a bird, I get even more pleasure from good friends. And if I have something good, I teach it to them, and I introduce them to others who will be useful to them with respect to virtue. And together with my friends I go through the treasures of wise men of old which they left behind written in books, and we peruse them. If we see something good, we pick it out and hold it to be a great profit, if we are able to prove useful to one another. --Socrates in Xenophon

Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back...
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Great men are they who see that spiritual thought is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

. . . she (Wisdom) is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty . . . she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God.

If wisdom is “the realization of that which is of value to ourselves and others” (as philosopher of science Nicholas Maxwell argues), we need to cultivate our wisdom or suffer the catastrophes we’ll otherwise create by foolish uses of our untempered powers. Thus we must now attend concertedly to the values by which we define progress, and we must reach planetary consensus regarding what is best not only for humanity but for all of Earth’s biosphere, for Gaia.

Wisdom: the realization of that which is of value to ourselves and others.

Those who are truly wise will remain unmoved by feelings of happiness and suffering, fame and disgrace, praise and blame, gain and loss.
They will remain calm like the eye of a hurricane.

Perfect wisdom,
Perfect tranquility,
Perfect compassion,

arise from

Our love,
Our sincerity.
Our understanding.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom is know what to do next; virtue is doing it.

He who knows others is wise. 
He who knows himself is enlightened.

There is a saying that Heaven is internal, humanity external and Virtue comes from the Heavenly. 
Know Heaven and humanity's actions, root yourself in Heaven and follow Virture.
Then you can bend, stretch, rush forward or hold back, because you will always return to the core and it will be said you have achieved the supreme.

Intelligence, guided by kindness, is the highest wisdom. . .

Intellect, without heart, is infinitely cruel. . . . So that, after all, the real aristocracy must be that of goodness where the intellect is directed by the heart.

Insignificant, is the loss of relatives, wealth and fame;
The loss of wisdom is the greatest loss.
Insignificant, is the increase of relatives, wealth and fame;
The increase of wisdom is the highest gain.
Therefore, you should train yourselves thus:
"We will grow in the increase of wisdom"
Thus you should train yourselves.

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.

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 non-essentials.

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.

The intellectual knowledge of eternal things pertains to wisdom; the rational knowledge of temporal things, to science.

The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

Wisdom is often nearer when we stoop than when we soar.

 It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

 Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.