Wisdom

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”

“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 man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone”

“A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”

“A pessimist is one who sees a disaster in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every disaster”

“A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business”

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”

“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation”

“A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system”

“A teacher, a really good sensei, is never a giver of 'truth'; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that the student must discover for himself”

“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”

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

“A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain”

“All men by nature desire to know”

“All warfare is based on deception”

“An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way”

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing”

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”

“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand”

“Art, Like Morality, Consists of Drawing the Line Somewhere”

“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own”

“As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least, to do no harm”

“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”

“Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born”

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth”

“Be water, my friend”

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

“Brevity is the soul of wit”

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

“Custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress”

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

“Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly”

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

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway”

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it”

“Don't think. Feel. It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory”

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

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

“Every individual is an exception to the rule”

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

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story”

“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait”

“Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature”

“Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases”

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

“Fashion is always a reflection of the times, but it is forgotten if it is foolish”

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled”

“Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you”

“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 that can have patience can have what he will”

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

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

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom”

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

“I don't give advice; I give opinions”

“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 suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail”

“I very frequently get the question: What's going to change in the next 10 years? I almost never get the question: What's not going to change in the next 10 years?”

“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”

“I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him”

“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 know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles”

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

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”

“If you've been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy”

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

“In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon”

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine”

“In the woods, we return to reason and faith”

“In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares”

“In wildness is the preservation of the world”

“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”

“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent”

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

“Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer”

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

“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall”

“Money is like muck, not good except it be spread”

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply”

“Much learning does not teach understanding”

“Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths”

“Nature to be commanded must be obeyed”

“Never say of anything, I have lost it; but, I have restored it”

“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”

“Nothing is ugly as long as it is alive”

“Our patience will achieve more than our force”

“Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen”

“Patience, and shuffle the cards”

“People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten”

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”

“Premature optimization is the root of all evil”

“Price is what you pay, value is what you get”

“Quality comes not from inspection, but from improvement of the production process”

“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing”

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

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

“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different”

“Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it”

“Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts”

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

“That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest”

“The beginning is the most important part of the work”

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

“The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer”

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning”

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do”

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone”

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not”

“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind”

“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 old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind”

“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 rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance”

“The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it”

“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 saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom”

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

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

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience”

“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 truth is rarely pure and never simple”

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

“The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills”

“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”

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved”

“There is no wealth but life”

“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all”

“There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit”

“They muddy the waters to make them look deep”

“Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that”

“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”

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace”

“Trust, but verify”

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect”

“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”

“We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”

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

“What is now proved was once only imagined”

“What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others”

“When the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right”

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe”

“when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it”

“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”

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes”

“Wisdom is the daughter of experience”

“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”

“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder”

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you”

“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist”

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

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding”