Wisdom

“A little learning is a dangerous thing”

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right”

“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart”

“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so”

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”

“Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man”

“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them”

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”

“Do not only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine”

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd”

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one”

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense”

“Fan Ch'ih asked about benevolence. The Master said, 'It is to love all men.'”

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has”

“He knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know”

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened”

“He who learns but does not think, is lost”

“I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams”

“I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts”

“I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties”

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”

“If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person”

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks”

“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well”

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”

“Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous”

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none”

“Much learning does not teach understanding”

“No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such”

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves”

“Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated”

“Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech”

“That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show”

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched”

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not”

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven”

“The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it”

“The perfect is the enemy of the good”

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself”

“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief”

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts”

“The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter”

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time”

“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see”

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it”

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer”

“They muddy the waters to make them look deep”

“Think not so much of what thou hast not as of what thou hast: but of the things which thou hast select the best, and then reflect how eagerly they would have been sought, if thou hadst them not”

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home”

“Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do”

“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind”

“Trust, but verify”

“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery”

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”

“What brings no benefit to the hive, brings none to the bee”

“What is now proved was once only imagined”

“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it — this is knowledge”

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”

“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist”

“You do not know where death awaits you; so be ready for it everywhere”