Quotes about Wisdom

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise.

Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.

we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities.

for the human mind in that grassy corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it.

The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them forward.

That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.

There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.

Those who are not of this world can do little else to arrest the errors of the obstinately worldly.

But it is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.