Wisdom

“Pain is a pesky part of being human, I've learned it feels like a stab wound to the heart, something I wish we could all do without, in our lives here. Pain is a sudden hurt that can't be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing. Pain feels like a fast stab wound to the heart. But then healing feels like the wind against your face when you are spreading your wings and flying through the air! We may not have wings growing out of our backs, but healing is the closest thing that will give us that wind against our faces.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
― Rumi


“it is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones


“You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls


“Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it. On these grounds a good fuck is not to be entirely scorned. But that's the result of a chance meeting too. You're damned right. Drink up. We'll have another.”
― Charles Bukowski


“V-Day…if you need this one day in a year to show everyone else you truly care for “your loved one” I think it’s quite stupid. I hate this commercialism. It’s all artificial, and has nothing to do with real love.”
― Jess C. Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel


“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ”
― Goldie Hawn

“If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door”
― Milton Berle

“We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
― Terence McKenna


“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”
― Alfred Tennyson

“Expectations make people miserable, so whatever yours are, lower them. You'll definitely be happier.”
― Simone Elkeles, How to Ruin Your Boyfriend's Reputation

“wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera


“As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”
― Leonardo da Vinci


“If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.”
― Mark Twain, Notebook


“Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.”
― Confucius

“Look for the good in every person and every situation. You'll almost always
find it.”
― Brian Tracy


“It’s always hard to lose somebody. It leaves a hole in you heart that never grows back. ”
― Kevin Brooks, Lucas


“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell


“If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.”
― Tallulah Bankhead


“I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying
the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I
now enjoy. ”
― Anthony Robbins


“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

“I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more
chances, Be more active, Show up more often.”
― Brian Tracy


“Anger exceeding limits causes fear and excessive kindness eliminates respect.”
― Euripides

“How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!”
― Homer


“People are always complaining that life's not fair, but that simply isn't true. Life is extraordinarily fair. It's just not centered on you.”
― Lynn Marie Sager, A River Worth Riding


“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, Strenuous Life


“Everything you do is triggered by an emotion of either desire or fear.”
― Brian Tracy


“That woman doesn't have the sense God gave a retarded flea.”
― Nora Roberts, Black Rose


Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
May, Path, Leave



“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story

“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
― Maurice Switzer

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It


“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
― Mark Twain


“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle


“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.”
― Jess C. Scott, The Intern


“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain


“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov


“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”
― John Lennon

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien


“May you live every day of your life.”
― Jonathan Swift

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must of felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
" Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas


“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
― Aristotle, Metaphysics


“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
― Fran Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader


“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
― Oprah Winfrey


“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”
― Paulo Coelho, Alchemist


“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates


“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.


“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucius


“I'm not young enough to know everything.”
― J.M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton


“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist


“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“Angry people are not always wise.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice


“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata


“The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”
― Marjorie Pay Hinckley


“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
― Albert Einstein


“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching


“The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.”
― Abigail Van Buren


“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens”
― Jimi Hendrix