Quotes about Wisdom

A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.

The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.

I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

Live free, child of the mist—and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist.

With respect to wit, I learned that there was not much difference between the half and the whole.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live.

I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in.

Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand.