c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while—just once in a while—there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!
— J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
Affliction is often that thing which prepares an ordinary person for some sort of an extraordinary destiny.
— C.S. Lewis
The Master said, “A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.”(Analects 2.11)
— Confucius
We need houses as we need clothes, architecture stimulates fashion. It’s like hunger and thirst — you need them both.
— Karl Lagerfeld
With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.
— Oscar Wilde
Don't be jealous of anyone. I guarantee you, if everyone walked into a room, and dumped their problems onto the floor, when they saw what everyone else's problems were, they'd be scrambling to get their own problems back before someone else got to them first.
— Kim Gruenenfelder, A Total Waste of Makeup
The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn entails that the knowledge was achieved on one's own accord - it feels great - but to be taught often leaves a feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
The immature think that knowledge and action are different, but the wise see them as the same.
— Anonymous, Bhagavad Gita: El Canto del Senor
Veganism is not a "sacrifice." It is a joy.
— Gary L. Francione
The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.
— Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
Take the matter as you find it ask no questions, utter no remonstrances; it is your best wisdom. You expected bread and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don't shriek because the nerves are martyrised; do not doubt that your mental stomach - if you have such a thing - is strong as an ostrich's; the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation; close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob.
— Charlotte Brontë
You see, the best thing about wrong decisions is that they don’t prevent you from making the right decisions later on. It’s harder, but it’s not impossible.
— Siobhan Vivian, Not That Kind of Girl
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
— Oscar Wilde
We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.
— Thomas Fuller
She wondered when her daughter would realise that for the most part, people weren't that different. Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: The wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, she thought, was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future. While most older people believed that they lay in the past.
— Nicholas Sparks
A person is wise if he listens to millions of advice and doesn't implement any of it.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
I don’t think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn't. But understanding... that's where things get sticky.
— Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye
Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
— Karl R. Popper
Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.
— Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
True kindness isn't something we're born with. It's something we have to work at. Not everyone has it. But I think everyone has the potential. Sometimes you just have to look really close before you can tell it's there."-Kyoko
— Natsuki Takaya
Aw I don't wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys.'...But you'll miss all that, just for some old wine.'There's wisdom in wine, goddam it!' I yelled. 'Have a shot!
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession. 
— George Washington
The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
— Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird
We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
I'm not sure why I've decided to do this. I'm not any stronger than I was, and nothing else has changed. But all the same, this time I'm not going to run away. It's okay to feel weak sometimes. It's okay to be afraid. The important thing is that we face our fears. That's what makes us strong."-Yuki
— Natsuki Takaya
Today the greatest single source of wealth is between your ears.
— Brian Tracy
When something seems wrong in your life, the only way to have resolution with it is to let it go. Trying to make it right keeps it wrong.
— Beth Johnson
Don't you notice that there are particular moments when you are naturally inspired to introspection? Work with them gently, for these are the moments when you can go through a powerful experience, and your whole worldview can change quickly.
— Sogyal Rinpoche
If you are not vegan, please consider going vegan. It’s a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend.
— Gary L. Francione
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.
— Susan Sontag, The Benefactor
Jewels can be replaced, cousin. Independence, once lost, cannot.
— R.L. LaFevers, Dark Triumph
Penetrate deep into the word "Om". Gradually the word will disappear and only the silence will remain. The word is a support. The meaning is within you. Om brings out that meaning which is hidden in your soul.
— Amit Ray, Om Chanting and Meditation
Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.
— Alan W. Watts
To acquire knowledge, one must study;but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
— Marilyn Vos Savant
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
— Margaret Thatcher
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
— Benjamin Franklin
To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
— Nicolaus Copernicus
Writing about the unholy is one way of writing about what is sacred. 
— Clive Barker
I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.
— Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.
— Brian Tracy
I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.
— John Berryman
I believe it is the mark of a great leader to question the decisions that came before him.
— Marissa Meyer, Cress
I don't trust men everybody likes. Being nice isn't the same as being good.
— Sarah Rees Brennan, The Demon's Covenant
There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.
— Robert Burns, Collected Poems of Robert Burns
Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.
— Dion Boucicault
You can never know everything. Part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of knowledge lies in going on anyway.
— Robert  Jordan
Wise men profit more by fools than fools by wise men.
— Marcus Porcius Cato
There is no one way to salvation, whatever the manner in which a man may proceed. All forms and variations are governed by the eternal intelligence of the Universe that enables a man to approach perfection. It may be in the arts of music and painting or it may be in commerce, law, or medicine. It may be in the study of war or the study of peace. Each is as important as any other. Spiritual enlightenment through religious meditation such as Zen or in any other way is as viable and functional as any "Way."... A person should study as they see fit.
— Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
The noble man is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship; of these, the former is a mortal good, the latter and immortal one.
— Epicurus
It's always hard to remember love - years pass and you say to yourself, Was I really in love, or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love, or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love, or was I just desperate?
— Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
Nothing and no one is perfect. It just takes a good eye to find those hidden imperfections.
— Daphne Delacroix
For the senses wander, and when one lets the mind follow them, it carries wisdom away like a windblown ship on the waters.
— Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita
To make no mistakes is not in the power of man
—  but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.
Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?
— Confucius
The most complicated skill is to be simple.
— Dejan Stojanovic
Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take you eyes off your goal.
— Henry James
A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still
— Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.
— Alan Cohen
When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude.
— Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Where there is anger there is always pain underneath.
— Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Communication is a skill that you can learn. It's like riding a bicycle or typing. If you're willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of very part of your life.
— Brian Tracy
If you want to fly on the sky, you need to leave the earth. If you want to move forward, you need to let go the past that drags you down.
— Amit Ray, World Peace: The Voice of a Mountain Bird
Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.
— Orison Swett Marden
Fashion and music are the same, because music express its period too.
— Karl Lagerfeld
When you assume you make a you-know-what out of U and me. Yep, so let's stop assuming so much. We are often quick to explain details to strangers, who we understand might not be reading our minds, but we often assume that those people closest to us, those who share our household such as spouses, children parents and siblings, can read our minds. And we get upset with them when they don't go figure.I wonder how many angry words are directed not at an action or inaction as would at first appear, but simply at the fact that somebody did not read our minds.So let's give those people we care most about the benefit of the doubt and do a little less assuming and a little more explaining.
— David Leonhardt
It is very hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal."Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said: "It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in the adventure before us.
— Benjamin Hoff, The Te of Piglet
The mermaid is an archetypal image that represents a woman who is at ease in the great waters of life, the waters of emotion and sexuality. She shows us how to embrace our instinctive sexuality and sensuality so that we can affirm the essence of our feminine nature, the wisdom of our bodies, and the playfulness of our spirits. She symbolizes our connection with our deepest instinctive feelings, our wild and untamed animal nature that exists below the surface of outward personalities. She is able to respond to her mysterious sexual impulses without abandoning her more human, conscious side. What happened to the girls who dreamed of being mermaids?
— Anita Johnston, Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationship with Food Through Myths, Metaphors, and Storytelling
Bitter your acts, bitter am I,Kindness your deeds, kindness am I,Pleasant and gentle, so you are,Fine honeyed lips and sweet talker.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, Love: The Joy That Wounds: The Love Poems of Rumi
Since there is no real silence, Silence will contain all the sounds, All the words, all the languages, All knowledge, all memory.
— Dejan Stojanovic
I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
REMEMBER YOUR GREATNESSBefore you were born,And were still too tiny forThe human eye to see,You won the race for lifeFrom among 250 million competitors.And yet,How fast you have forgottenYour strength,When your very existenceIs proof of your greatness.You were born a winner,A warrior,One who defied the oddsBy surviving the most gruesomeBattle of them all.And now that you are a giant,Why do you even doubt victoryAgainst smaller numbers,And wider margins?The only walls that exist,Are those you have placed in your mind.And whatever obstacles you conceive,Exist only because you have forgottenWhat you have alreadyAchieved.Poetry by Suzy Kassem
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
If I’d stayed there, would I always have been happy? No, I suppose not. People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvelous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.
— J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country
Age is a hell of a price to pay for wisdom
— George Carlin
We should always be clear that animal exploitation is wrong because it involves speciesism. And speciesism is wrong because, like racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, classism, and all other forms of human discrimination, speciesism involves violence inflicted on members of the moral community where that infliction of violence cannot be morally justified. But that means that those of us who oppose speciesism necessarily oppose discrimination against humans. It makes no sense to say that speciesism is wrong because it is like racism (or any other form of discrimination) but that we do not have a position about racism. We do. We should be opposed to it and we should always be clear about that.
— Gary L. Francione
I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss
— Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
he who will not economize will have to agonize
— Confucius
The light of compassion opens the petals of the heart. When the petals of the heart unfold fragrance spreads across the valley.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
Don’t let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.
— Roopleen, Words to inspire the winner in YOU
Aren't you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: 'May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.' But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
The sun always shines above the clouds.
— Paul F. Davis
Common sense will nearly always stand you in better stead than a slavish adherence to the conventions.
— M.M. Kaye, Shadow of the Moon
At the end of the day, the questions we ask of ourselves determine the type of people that we will become.
— Leo Babauta
My father taught me that you can you read a hundred books on wisdom and write a hundred books on wisdom, but unless you apply what you learned then its only words on a page. Life is not lived with intentions, but action.
— Shannon L. Alder
The fates lead him who will
—  him who won't they drag.
Remember, whatever you focus upon, increases...When you focus on the things you need, you'll find those needs increasing. If you concentrate your thoughts on what you don't have, you will soon be concentrating on other things that you had forgotten you don't have-and feel worse! If you set your mind on loss, you are more likely to lose...But a grateful perspective brings happiness and abundance into a person's life.
— Andy Andrews, The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
Soldiers live. He dies and not you, and you feel guilty, because you're glad he died, and not you. Soldiers live, and wonder why.
— Glen Cook, Soldiers Live
Forget the place you're trying to get to and see the beauty in right now...
— Evanescence
Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the mind. Then there is abiding in the Seer's own form.
— Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.
— Brian Tracy, The Gift of Self-Confidence
It don't do you no nevermind to tell nobody nothing.
— Thomas McGuane
All you can do is make your decisions based on what you know now.
— Malinda Lo, Huntress
What good is power when you're too wise to use it?
— Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
The man armed with knowledge has a better chance of survival than the man who is simply the fittest. Knowledge is the true strength. Muscle is where the myth is.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Never underestimate your power to change yourself
—  never overestimate your power to change others.
Don't forget to love yourself.
— Søren Kierkegaard
All that sadness. All that anger. It is the smoke that gets into your eyes. If you do not blow it away, how can you hope to see?
— Anthony Horowitz, Russian Roulette: The Story of an Assassin
We can no more justify using nonhumans as human resources than we can justify human slavery. Animal use and slavery have at least one important point in common: both institutions treat sentient beings exclusively as resources of others. That cannot be justified with respect to humans
—  it cannot be justified with respect to nonhumans—however “humanely” we treat them.
Old words are reborn with new faces.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Behaviour is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A knavish speech sleeps in a fool's ear.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Education is beautification of the inner world and the outer world.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
People are always worried about what's happening next. They often find it difficult to stand still, to occupy the now without worrying about the future. People are generally not satisfied with what they have; they are very concerned with what they are going to have.
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
for a woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea
— Honoré de Balzac
Everybody wants to be on the mountaintop, but if you'll remember, mountaintops are rocky and cold. There is no growth on the top of a mountain. Sure, the view is great, but what's a view for? A view just gives us a glimpse of our next destination-our next target. But to hit that target, we must come off the mountain, go through the valley, and begin to climb the next slope. It is in the valley that we slog through the lush grass and rich soil, learning and becoming what enables us to summit life's next peak.
— Andy Andrews, The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
If everyone helps to hold up the sky, then one person does not become tired.
— Askhari Johnson Hodari, Lifelines: The Black Book of Proverbs
He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely no power in intention. The seagull may intend to fly away, may decide to do so, may talk with the other seagulls about how wonderful it is to fly, but until the seagull flaps his wings and takes to the air, he is still on the dock. There’s no difference between that gull and all the others. Likewise, there is no difference in the person who intends to do things differently and the one who never thinks about it in the first place. Have you ever considered how often we judge ourselves by our intentions while we judge others by their actions? Yet intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you.
— Andy Andrews, The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
I've learned .... That opportunities are never lost
—  someone will take the ones you miss.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,Rough-hew them how we will.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.
— Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.
— Baltasar Gracián
It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better.
— Kay Redfield Jamison
No one believes a liar even when he tells the truth
— Aesop
The future will be what it will, and fretting about it will only make your fears more likely to come true.
— Christopher Paolini, Inheritance
Your biggest opportunity probably lies under your own feet, in your current job, industry, education, experience or interests.
— Brian Tracy
This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, "There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Few things a doctor does are more important than relieving pain. . . pain is soul destroying. No patient should have to endure intense pain unnecessarily. The quality of mercy is essential to the practice of medicine; here, of all places, it should not be strained.
— Marcia Angell
The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.
— A.S. Byatt, Possession
True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
When you know the knower within, you don't need to know further. When you know the meditator within, you don't need to meditate further. When you truly know the worshiper in you, you are to be worshiped.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
Science is observing truth in the light of head. Religion is observing truth in the light of heart. Humanity is using both the lights. And education is developing that humanity.
— Amit Ray
We're on the same boat but in different cabin
— Hlovate, Rooftop Rant
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
A person is a person through other persons.None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.
— Desmond Tutu
The best teachers have showed me that things have to be done bit by bit. Nothing that means anything happens quickly--we only think it does. The motion of drawing back a bow and sending an arrow straight into a target takes only a split second, but it is a skill many years in the making. So it is with a life, anyone's life. I may list things that might be described as my accomplishments in these few pages, but they are only shadows of the larger truth, fragments separated from the whole cycle of becoming. And if I can tell an old-time story now about a man who is walking about, waudjoset ndatlokugan, a forest lodge man, alesakamigwi udlagwedewugan, it is because I spent many years walking about myself, listening to voices that came not just from the people but from animals and trees and stones.
— Joseph Bruchac
Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.
— Jim Butcher, White Night
Ask not of things to shed their veils. Unveil yourselves, and things will be unveiled.
— Mikhail Naimy, The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery Which Was Once Called the Ark
To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom.
— Marion Zimmer Bradley
Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.
— Harper Lee
My dad always says, some people will treat you badly and you can't help that. But how you handle it and how it makes you feel, that's up to you.
— Elise Broach, Shakespeare's Secret
All our wisdom is stored in the trees.
— Santosh Kalwar
One way to define wisdom is the ability to see, into the future, the consequences of your choices in the present. That ability can give you a completely different perspective on what the future might look like.
— Andy Andrews, The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
To risk life to save a smile on a face of a woman or a child is the secret of chivalry.
— Dejan Stojanovic
the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.
— Andy Rooney
Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.
— John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
Wisdom is the daughter of experience
— Leonardo da Vinci
If one tries to navigate unknown waters one runs the risk of shipwreck
— Albert Einstein
In a dark time, the eye begins to see.
— Theodore Roethke
Its more than a simple belief that there is good and that it should fight the evil in the world. It's a personification of Light and Darkness at their most elemental level, as forces that are so absorbed with themselves that one cannot exist without the other though they constantly try to consume one another. One of the earliest repersentations of Light and Darkness was of Light being a massive black bull and Darkness being an enormous white bull.
— P.C. Cast, Burned
Suffering teaches joy.
— Sonia Rumzi
La rutina no está tanto en las cosas como en nuestra incapacidad para crear a cada momento un vínculo original con ellas, en nuestra tendencia a leerlas por la falsilla de lo rutinario, de lo ya aprendido. Hay que seguir dejando siempre abierta la puerta al cuarto de jugar.
— Carmen Martín Gaite, El cuento de nunca acabar
Be first the master of yourself
— Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
The thing about living alone is that it gives you a lot of time to think. You don't necessarily reach any conclusions, because wisdom is largely a function of intelligence and self-awareness, not time on your hands. But you do become very good at thinking yourself into endless loops of desperation in half the time it would take a normal person.
— Jonathan Tropper, One Last Thing Before I Go
The use of sea and air is common to all; neither can a title to the ocean belong to any people or private persons, forasmuch as neither nature nor public use and custom permit any possession therof.
— Elizabeth I, Letters
Not only do you become what you think about, but the world also becomes what you think about. Those who think that the world is a dark place are blind to the light that might illuminate their lives. Those who see the light of the world view the dark spots as merely potential light.
— Wayne W. Dyer
Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers.And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.
— Osho
Who does ever get what they want? It doesn’t seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It’s always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings.
— Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night
There are people in the world, who are just wrong, and then there are the masses of population that are right, or at the very least they lie in the veil of between. I on the other hand, do not belong to any group. I don’t exist. It’s not that I don’t have substance; I have a body like everyone else. I can feel the fire when it burns against my skin, the rain when it caresses my face and the breeze as it fingers my hair. I have all the senses that other people do. I am just empty, inside.
— J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness
I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
…a man should say to his soul every morning, "God has given thee twenty-four treasures; take heed lest thou lose anyone of them, for thou wilt not be able to endure the regret that will follow such loss.
— حجة الإسلام أبي حامد محمد الغزالي, The Alchemy of Happiness
We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.
— Ellen Goodman
Never say anything about yourself you don't want to come true
— Brian Tracy
Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together
—  it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman... whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip. It was the only kind of loyalty they seemed to have. Men were different. They might hate each other but they stuck together against the world and against any woman who would ensnare one of them.
A good traveler leaves no tracks. Good speech lacks fault-finding.
— Lao Tzu
How many people you bless is how you measure success
— Rick Ross
Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.
— Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.
— Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky
See, the ‘small stuff’ is what makes up the larger picture of our lives. Many people are like you, young man. But their perspective is distorted. They ignore ‘small stuff,’ claiming to have an eye on the bigger picture, never understanding that the bigger picture is composed of nothing more than-are you ready?- ‘small stuff’.
— Andy Andrews, The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
In art, and maybe just in general, the idea is to be able to be really comfortable with contradictory ideas. In other words, wisdom might be, seem to be, two contradictory ideas both expressed at their highest level and just let to sit in the same cage sort of, vibrating. So, I think as a writer, I'm really never sure of what I really believe.
— George Saunders
A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
There's a thin line between genius and bottom-barrel stupidness. I hover delicately on a tightrope between the two, wondering where I'll land if I'll ever fall.
— Suzanne Crowley, The Very Ordered Existence of Merilee Marvelous
You have a great heart, but will only find it to be so through great pain. This is the wisdom of love, and its doubtful gift. . . . I have endured much suffering and still remain unbitter and unclosed.
— Alison Croggon, The Naming
While it is true that most people never see or understand the difference they make, or sometimes only imagine their actions having a tiny effect, every single action a person takes has far-reaching consequences.
— Andy Andrews, The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
Compassion is all inclusive. Compassion knows no boundaries. Compassion comes with awareness, and awareness breaks all narrow territories.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
After all Death is a Symbol that there was Life.
— Mario Benedetti
Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.
— Brian Tracy, Focal Point: A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals
the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Develop the winning edge
—  small differences in your performance can lead to large differences in your results.
You'd be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you'd do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.
— Sarah Addison Allen
Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
— Nelson Algren, A Walk on the Wild Side
Brave? Or stupid?"Roger shrugged. "I've never been quite sure where brave stopped and stupid began, myself.
— Gerald Morris, The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf
Your teacher might be a child who takes you by the hand and asks you a question that you hadn't considered before, and your answer to the child is your answer to yourself.
— Wayne W. Dyer
Healey’s First Law Of Holes: When in one, stop digging.
— Denis Healey
But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
The moon will guide you through the night with her brightness, but she will always dwell in the darkness, in order to be seen.
— Shannon L. Alder
Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.
— William Blake
Routine feeds the illusion of safety...
— Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.
— Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
— Thomas Paine
He's acting as foolish as a kitten... but then, everyone's entitled to a little foolishness once in a while.
— Christopher Paolini, Inheritance
Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
How will you know the difficulties of being human, if you are always flying off to blue perfection? Where will you plant your grief seeds? Workers need ground to scrape and hoe, not the sky of unspecified desire.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
At times anger will trigger harsh words. After a cooling period wisdom sets in; finally, the ability to speak from the heart with love and compassion.
— Ana Monnar, Relax: New And Selected Poems: New And Selected Poems
When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
a wise woman puts a grain of sugar in everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.
— Helen Rowland
The greatest wisdom consists in knowing one's own follies.
— Madame de Sablé
They are called, "SELF-worth" and "SELF-esteem" for a reason... we can't let others decide what we are worth, that is so dangerous! Empower yourself!
— Jaeda DeWalt
COMING FORTH INTO THE LIGHTI was born the dayI thought:What is?What was?AndWhat if?I was transformed the dayMy ego shattered,And all the superficial, materialThings that matteredTo me before,Suddenly ceasedTo matter.I really came into beingThe day I no longer cared aboutWhat the world thought of me,Only on my thoughts forChanging the world.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Just because you're in a situation, doesn't mean you have to be that situation. You're not the situation you're in!
— K.M. Johnson, Knowing the Struggle Is Over!
Your life is always under construction. It is your job to learn howto untangle the threads and weave a tapestry that matches your desires.
— Dannye Williamsen
You cannot hinder someone’s free will, that’s the first law of the Universe, no matter what the decision.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
It is man's unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
The essence of wisdom is to know when to be doing, and when it's useless even to try
— Mary  Stewart, The Last Enchantment
For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress -- to the future.
— Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
After his experience with Minos, Nico realized that most spectres held only as much power as you allowed them to have. They pried into your mind, using fear or anger or longing to influence you. Nico had learned to shield himself. Sometimes he could even turn the tables and bend ghosts to his will.
— Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.
— A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner
I mean, reality sucks. The world is a cancer, and shits so bad it’s scary. Everything’s filthy. But you know what? One day, it’s not going to be here. So be glad you know what life is. You’re alive. Live.
— Mitch Lucker
Wisdom. . .is knowing what you have to accept.
— Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
...unfortunately, it's true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. If you're not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter.
— Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
I would rather carry around a plastic bag with five thousand Euro inside, than carry around a Louis Vuitton/Gucci/Prada bag with only one hundred Euro inside!
— C. JoyBell C.
You see, to find the brightest wisdom one must pass through the darkest zones. And through the darkest zones there can be no guide. No guide, that is, but courage
— Adam Gidwitz, A Tale Dark & Grimm
The more you know, the less you need.
— Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
If you are driven by fear, anger or pride nature will force you to compete. If you are guided by courage, awareness, tranquility and peace nature will serve you.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.
— Roy T. Bennett
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
— Andrew Davidson
Perhaps wisdom is simply a matter of waiting, and healing a question of time. And anything good you've ever been given is yours forever.
— Rachel Naomi Remen
When there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the spiritual is apt gradually to be lost.
— Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
We don't want to think about our weaknesses. We don't want to talk about them, and we certainly don't want anyone else to point them out. This is a classic sign of mediocrity, and this mediocrity has a firm grip on the Church and humanity at this moment in history.
— Matthew Kelly, Rediscover Catholicism
The more you look into and understand yourself, the less judgmental you become towards others.
— Tariq Ramadan
The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.
— C.S. Lewis
Learning isn't acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
There are two words that you should use frequently in your youth: ´sorry´ and ´thank-you´. Use the first one as often as possible, so that on your death bed all that you have to say to your friends is ´thank-you!´.
— Robin Jones Gunn
Everyone's allowed to be in love with the wrong person at some point. In fact, it's a mistake not to be.
— Harriet Evans, Happily Ever After
Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?
— H. Rider Haggard, She
It is born in mind that the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching the goal. The tragedy of life lies in having no goal to reach.
— Benjamin E. Mays
The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.
— Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic and Other Essays
Sure, it was your idea and your fly, but he caught the big fish. Remember, fairness is a human idea largely unknown in nature.
— John Gierach, Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders: A John Gierach Fly-Fishing Treasury
The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.
— Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Nico knew something about ghosts. Letting them get inside your head was dangerous. He wanted to help Reyna, but since his own strategy was to deal with his problems alone, spurning anyone who tried to get close, he couldn’t exactly criticize Reyna for doing the same thing.
— Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
It is easy to be wise after the event.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes
He who binds to himself a joyDoes the winged life destroy
— But he who kisses the joy as it fliesLives in eternity's sun rise.
If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us...then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place.
— Amor Towles, Rules of Civility
Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, " This is new, and therefore better.
— John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
Probably the wisest words that were ever uttered to me. Came from a therapist. I was sitting in her office, crying my eyes out. . . and she said, "So let me get this straight. You base your personal happiness on things entirely out of your control.
— Laura Munson, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness
A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places. A real friend who comes to the house is a heavenly messenger, who brings the panis angelorum.
— Karen Blixen, Out of Africa
Lady Wisdom will be your close friend
—  and Brother Knowledge will be your pleasant companion.
Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.
— Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road