Quotes about wisdom
wisdom years taught
Happy those Who in the after-days shall live, when Time Hath spoken, and the multitude of years Taught wisdom to mankind! Robert Southey
wisdom feet mouths
Every speaker has a mouth; An arrangement rather neat. Sometimes it's filled with wisdom. Sometimes it's filled with feet.
wisdom people ambitious
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
wisdom wall children
Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery. Stephen Crane
wisdom past guidance
Apothegms are the wisdom of the past condensed for the instruction and guidance of the present. Tryon Edwards
wisdom men wisest-man
It is no weakness for the wisest man to learn when he is wrong. Sophocles
wisdom pride men
Man's highest blessedness, In wisdom chiefly stands; And in the things that touch upon the Gods, 'Tis best in word or deed To shun unholy pride; Great words of boasting bring great punishments, And so to grey-haired age Teach wisdom at the last. Sophocles
wisdom men drink
If you were to offer a thirsty man all wisdom, you would not please him more than if you gave him a drink. Sophocles
wisdom men interesting
The minute a man is convinced he is interesting, he isn't. Stephen Leacock
wisdom baby growing-up
... don't let your elders and supposed betters tell you any different. Sure, you've never been to Paris. No, you never ran with the bulls at Pamploma. Yes, you're a pissant who had no hair in your armpits until three years ago - but so what? If you don't start out too big for your britches, how are you gonna fill 'em when you grow up? Let it rip regardless of what anybody tells you, that's my idea; sit down an smoke that baby. Stephen King
wisdom new-year time
Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols. Thomas Mann
wisdom men doubt
The fruitfulness of our lives depends in large measure in our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility. Thomas Merton
wisdom thorns penance
I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me. Thomas Merton
wisdom peace men
Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31 Thomas Merton
wisdom integrity men
They were in the world and not of it--not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it. Thomas Merton
wisdom crazy book
Day after day I read Freud, thinking myself to be very enlightened and scientific when, as a matter of fact, I was about as scientific as an old woman secretly poring over books about occultism, trying to tell her own fortune, and learning how to dope out the future form the lines in the palm of her hand. I don't know if I ever got very close to needing a padded cell: but if I ever had gone crazy, I think psychoanalysis would have been the one thing chiefly responsible for it. Thomas Merton
wisdom men light
The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it. Thomas Merton
wisdom school men
The Hindus are not looking for us to send them men who will build schools and hospitals, although those things are good and useful in themselves--and perhaps very badly needed in India: they want to know if we have any saints to send them. Thomas Merton
wisdom book thinking
How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all. Thomas Merton
wisdom prayer angel
The lights of prayer that make us imagine we are beginning to be angels are sometimes only signs that we are finally beginning to be men. We do not have a high enough opinion of our own nature. We think we are at the gates of heaven and we are only just beginning to come into our own realm as free and intelligent beings. Thomas Merton
wisdom light darkness
For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness Thomas Merton
wisdom light bird
For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the point vierge between darkness and light, between being and nonbeing. You can tell yourself the time by their waking, if you are experienced. But that is your folly, not theirs. Thomas Merton
wisdom jesus suffering-and-death
....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning. Thomas Merton
wisdom athlete soul
Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity. Thomas Merton
wisdom hate mean
Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage. Thomas Merton
wisdom prayer pride
It is a kind of pride to insist that none of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God – acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him and dependent, by His will, on material things, too. Thomas Merton
wisdom silence
Whose silence are you? Thomas Merton
wisdom artist alchemist
Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist. Thomas Merton
wisdom order evil
In all His acts God orders all things, whether good or evil, for the good of those who know Him and seek Him and who strive to bring their own freedom under obedience to His divine purpose. All that is done by the will of God in secret is done for His glory and for the good of those whom He has chosen to share in His glory. Thomas Merton
wisdom pain fall
The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God. Thomas Merton
wisdom jobs believe
Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? He will accept such work only as a 'means of livelihood' while he waits to discover his 'true vocation'. The world is full of unsuccessful businessmen who still secretly believe they were meant to be artists or writers or actors in the movies. Thomas Merton
wisdom evil temptation
The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods. Thomas Merton
wisdom heart expression
God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts. Thomas Merton