wisdom
Quotations
Quotations on the topic of ‘wisdom’ from all listed authors (click on the ‘click to view listing’ links to view each quote in full).
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“Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.” -William Wordsworth
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“The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.” -Reinhold Niebuhr
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“There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.” -Francis Bacon
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“If we have built on the fragile cornerstones of human wisdom, pride, and conditional love, things may look good for a while, but a weak foundation causes collapse when storms hit.” -Charles Stanley
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“Some wisdom you must learn from one who’s wise.” -Euripides
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“Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.” -Anatole France
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“At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.” -Mason Cooley
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“Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.” -Thomas J. Watson
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“The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool the truest heroism is to resist the doubt and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.” -Nathaniel Hawthorne
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“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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“The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.” -Michel de Montaigne
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“I have the responsibility of over four million people, and I am in a position to do good, to be able to bring about a new life for my people, and I will continue to move in that direction. It’s a burden, but it needs to be done, and you have to have the courage…
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“Though sages may pour out their wisdom’s treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure.” -Lord Byron
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“Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.” -Alice Walker
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“There’s a beauty to wisdom and experience that cannot be faked. It’s impossible to be mature without having lived.” -Amy Grant
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“Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.” -Honore de Balzac
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“Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.” -Plutarch
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“The war… was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.” -Robert E. Lee
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“If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.” -William Butler Yeats
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“To keep your secret is wisdom but to expect others to keep it is folly.” -Samuel Johnson
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“The hours of folly are measured by the clock but of wisdom, no clock can measure.” -William Blake
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“Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.” -Carl Sandburg
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“More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.” -George Eliot
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“I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise.” -John Keats
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“Enraging liberals is simply one of the more enjoyable side effects of my wisdom.” -Rush Limbaugh
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“Let us be about setting high standards for life, love, creativity, and wisdom. If our expectations in these areas are low, we are not likely to experience wellness. Setting high standards makes every day and every decade worth looking forward to.” -Greg Anderson
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“Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.” -Bo Bennett
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“The key to wisdom is this – constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.” -Peter Abelard
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“However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.” -Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom and a great empire and little minds go ill together.” -Edmund Burke
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“Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.” -Bertrand Russell
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“Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero
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“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.” -Immanuel Kant
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“Start with God – the first step in learning is bowing down to God only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning.” -King Solomon
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“In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.” -Ansel Adams
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“Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.” -Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one’s being.” -Orison Swett Marden
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“Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.” -Epicurus
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“The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.” -James Allen
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“Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.” -Aleister Crowley
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“And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward……
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“What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.” -Henry Ward Beecher
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“War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.” -Thomas Paine
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“Experience – the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.” -Ambrose Bierce
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“The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.” -Andrew Jackson
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“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.” -Sigmund Freud
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“Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk and to make our words and actions all of a color.” -Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“We don’t receive wisdom we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” -Marcel Proust
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“In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.” -Theodore Dreiser
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“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.” -E. O. Wilson
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“Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.” -Rabindranath Tagore
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“In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom we have to say, Like People like Government.” -Thomas Carlyle
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“The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
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“I learned some valuable lessons about the legislative process, the importance of bipartisan cooperation and the wisdom of taking small steps to get a big job done.” -Hillary Clinton
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“Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.” -Oprah Winfrey
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“Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.” -H. L. Mencken
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“Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.” -Clifford Stoll
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“Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.” -e. e. cummings
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“Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.” -Robert Louis Stevenson
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“In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.” -Lucille Ball
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“Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.” -Erma Bombeck
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“Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government. But from the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution.” -Mitt Romney
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“Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.” -Morihei Ueshiba
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“Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.” -Francis of Assisi
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“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.” -Calvin Coolidge
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“Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.” -Khalil Gibran
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“Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.” -Benjamin Franklin
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“The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” -Isaac Asimov
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“The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.” -Aristotle
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“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
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“Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.” -Henry David Thoreau
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“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” -T. S. Eliot
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“The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.” -Robert Frost
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“Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.” -Bill Cosby
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“Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.” -Charles Spurgeon
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“Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.” -Robert Kennedy
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“Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.” -Buddha
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“Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.” -Albert Einstein
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“A loving heart is the truest wisdom.” -Charles Dickens
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“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.” -Socrates
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“So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.” -Thomas Jefferson
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“I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.” -John F. Kennedy
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“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.” -Mahatma Gandhi
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“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” -Ludwig van Beethoven
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“Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.” -David Herbert Lawrence
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“It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn’t have it, to fear and suspect the worst.” -Desiderius Erasmus
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“The opportunity for brotherhood presents itself every time you meet a human being.” -Jane Wyman
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“It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.” -Harold S. Geneen
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“Wise kings generally have wise counselors and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.” -Diogenes
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“The future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” -William Gibson
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“Wisdom is knowing what to do next virtue is doing it.” -David Starr Jordan
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“It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.” -William Ralph Inge
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“Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.” -Phil Jackson
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“If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent if you believe the military, nothing is safe.” -Lord Salisbury
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“Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.” -Juvenal
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“The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.” -Dean Inge
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“Virtues are acquired through endeavor, which rests wholly upon yourself.” -Sidney Lanier
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“Man’s wisdom is his best friend folly his worst enemy.” -William Temple
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“Deliberately seek opportunities for kindness, sympathy, and patience.” -Evelyn Underhill
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“Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.” -Thomas B. Macaulay
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“The day of fortune is like a harvest day, We must be busy when the corn is ripe.” -Torquato Tasso
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“Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.” -Doug Larson
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“Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.” -Jean Paul
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“Repeat anything often enough and it will start to become you.” -Tom Hopkins
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“He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.” -Edgar R. Fiedler
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“When an opponent comes forward, move in and greet him if he wants to pull back, send him on his way.” -Morihei Ueshiba
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“When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange – my youth.” -Sara Teasdale
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“If you want to be found stand where the seeker seeks.” -Sidney Lanier
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“Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.” -Alfred Austin
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“It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.” -Richard Whately
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“What is man’s ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty.” -Shinichi Suzuki
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“He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty.” -Mary Wilson Little
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“You can’t sweep other people off their feet, if you can’t be swept off your own.” -Clarence Day
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“The difference between chirping out of turn and a faux pas depends on what kind of a bar you’re in.” -Wilson Mizner
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“Rarely promise, but, if lawful, constantly perform.” -William Penn
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“Wise men make more opportunities than they find.” -Francis Bacon
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“The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.” -Benjamin Disraeli
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“Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.” -Josh Billings
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“A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.” -Horace
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“Self-suggestion makes you master of yourself.” -W. Clement Stone
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“The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.” -Joseph Smith, Jr.
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“In seeking wisdom thou art wise in imagining that thou hast attained it – thou art a fool.” -Lord Chesterfield
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“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” -Hermann Hesse
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“Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.” -Tom Wilson
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“It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.” -Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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“The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.” -John Burroughs
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“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.” -Robert H. Schuller
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“He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.” -James Huneker
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“Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.” -Tobias Smollett
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“Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.” -Alexander Pope
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“Knowledge is proud that it knows so much wisdom is humble that it knows no more.” -William Cowper
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“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.” -Anton Chekhov
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“The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.” -Napoleon Bonaparte
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“Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.” -Aesop
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“It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.” -Logan P. Smith
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“Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.” -Baltasar Gracian
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“Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.” -Arthur Helps
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“Who is wise in love, love most, say least.” -Alfred Lord Tennyson
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“If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements.” -Mason Cooley
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“Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.” -Og Mandino
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“In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.” -Arthur Schopenhauer
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“You have to find out what’s right for you, so it’s trial and error. You are going to be all right if you accept realistic goals for yourself.” -Teri Garr
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“You must accept responsibility for your actions, but not the credit for your achievements.” -Denis Waitley
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“Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.” -George Santayana
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“Start wide, expand further, and never look back.” -Arnold Schwarzenegger
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“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” -Arthur Conan Doyle
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“This is the highest wisdom that I own freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.” -Akhenaton
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“Don’t taunt the alligator until after you’ve crossed the creek.” -Dan Rather
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“Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.” -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” -Bertrand Russell
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“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” -H. L. Mencken
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“It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.” -Epictetus
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“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” -William Blake
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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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“I didn’t get where I am today by worryin’ about how I’d feel tomorrow.” -Ron White
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“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.” -Daniel J. Boorstin
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“No man was ever wise by chance.” -Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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“Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.” -Henry Ward Beecher
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“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” -John Muir
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“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.” -John Steinbeck
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“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” -George S. Patton
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“The less you talk, the more you’re listened to.” -Abigail Van Buren
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