Quotable Quotes: Wisdom
by Miki Saxon
I think the greatest compliment anyone can receive is to have something they say be deemed ‘wise’ by those around them. It has happened to me a few times and, to be honest, blew me away.
So I went looking for quotes about wisdom and found so many good ones that I’ll post the rest next week.
The thing about wisdom is that it transcends street smarts and learning. As Sandra Carey says, “Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”
Wisdom, like charity, begins at home; Gian Carlo Menotti put it this way, “A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.”
Anon clarifies that advice and takes it a step further, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
Plato said, “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.” Maybe that explains all those talking heads and sound bites that pass for wisdom these days.
Once you achieve even a modicum of wisdom you can’t count on it being permanent. Kahlil Gibran understood that when he said, “Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.”
But, as usual, at least for me, it’s Lao Tzu who really hits the nail on wisdom’s head, “Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.” Sadly, it seems that the higher you go the fewer people take the time for enlightenment.
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Image credit: sbpp on sxc.hu
October 18th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
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November 3rd, 2009 at 5:58 am
Great quotes , wisdom is well displayed here
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:14 am
Too bad more people don’t possess it or follow those who do. These days most seem to follow ideology as if it were wisdom.
May 2nd, 2010 at 1:07 am
[…] we would revisit wisdom, since questions are often the start of wisdom, forgetting that I just did two on wisdom in October. But that’s OK; you can’t have too much […]