Wisdom

It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right

Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

A person with a mind is bound to be filled with conceptions. These conceptions prevent him from knowing things directly, so a person with a mind shall never really know.

This implies that the art of life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles of growth and decay, so that one's actions may use them and not fight them.

My works are the issue of simple and plain experience which is the true mistress.

Ask counsel of him who rules himself well.

Oh! Speculators on things, boast not of knowing the things that nature ordinarily brings about; but rejoice if you know the end of those things which you yourself device.

It is a far worthier thing to read by the light of experience than to adorn oneself with the labors of others.

Old age takes in part savory wisdom for its food, see to that your old age will not lack in nourishment.

O admirable necessity! O powerful action! What mind can penetrate your nature? What language can express this marvel? None, to be sure. This is where human discourse turns toward the contemplation of the divine.

Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead: The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement.

Being engulfed in practice without delicate knowledge related to it, is in many ways like entering a ship without knowing where it is headed.

It is ill to praise, and worse to blame, the thing which you do not understand.

Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us.

Whatever you do in life, if you want to be creative and intelligent, and develop your brain, you must do everything with the awareness that everything, in some way, connects to everything else.

A clever man without wisdom is like a beautiful flower without fragrance.

Strive to preserve your health; and in this you will better succeed in proportion as you keep clear of the physicians, for their drugs are a kind of alchemy concerning which there are no fewer books than there are medicines.

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.