Quotes about Wisdom

We suffer not from the events in our lives but from our judgement about them.

For even sheep do not vomit up their grass and show to the shepherds how much they have eaten; but when they have internally digested the pasture, they produce externally wool and milk. Do you also show not your theorems to the uninstructed, but show the acts which come from their digestion.

If you want to improve, you must be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

If a man has reported to you, that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make any defense to what has been told you: but reply, The man did not know the rest of my faults, for he would not have mentioned these only.

He who exercises wisdom, exercises the knowledge which is about God.

Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief.

He who is discontented with what he has, and with what has been granted to him by fortune, is one who is ignorant of the art of living, but he who bears that in a noble spirit, and makes reasonable use of all that comes from it, deserves to be regarded as a good man.

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.

Never say of anything that I've lost it, only that Ive given it back.

greatness of reason is measured not by height or length, but by the quality of its judgements.

Man, the rational animal, can put up with anything except what seems to him irrational; whatever is rational is tolerable.