Quotes about Wisdom

There are five incomplete phenomena (or unripe fruits). The incomplete experience of death is sleep; an incomplete form of prophecy is dream; the incomplete form of the world to come is the Sabbath; the incomplete form of the heavenly light is the orb of the sun; the incomplete form of heavenly wisdom is the Torah.

This view had been the fundamental feature of his image of the world and the basis of his conduct in life. It justified the structure of his economic existence. He could permit his livelihood to be assured by his brother's strenuous and dangerous work, so that Maimonides could devote himself to realizing his plans in peace and quiet. This view also had a place in his self-confidence and probably aroused a certain awareness of the relationship of providence to his own life.

In moments of great crisis they all fail—priests, philosophers, scientists—the prophets alone prevail.

It is not enough to think about the prophets; we must think through the prophets. It is not enough to read the Bible for its wisdom; we must pray the Bible to comprehend its claim.

It is the Bible that enables us to know the Bible.

The way to understand the meaning of torah min hashamayim ("the Bible is from heaven") is to understand the meaning of hashamayim min hatorah ("heaven is from the Bible). Whatever taste of "heaven" we have on earth is in the Bible.

Freedom does not mean the right to live as we please. It means the power to live spiritually, to rise to a higher level of existence.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, And this too, shall pass away. How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)

I am nothing, truth is everything.