Wisdom: The trait of utilising knowledge and experience with common sense and insight.
Quote: Quotations are what peole use as proverbs, as quick and painless ways to remember and transmit information, and (on occasion) to prop up fallacious sagging arguments and make them appear grander, fuller, and more solid than they actually are. Quotations are verbal push-up bras.
Wisdom Quote: Select nuggets of wisdom taken word for word from other individuals known for their Pearls of Wisdom. Where possible, I always credit the giver.
Want a full listing of all the motivational wisdom quotes used on this site?
Wisdom Quotes Used on This Site:
Each place has its own advantages - heaven for the climate, and hell for the society.
Mark Twain
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
Matt Groening
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Homer
On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows,
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
Edward Young
The man of wisdom is never of two minds;
the man of benevolence never worries;
the man of courage is never afraid.
Confucius
One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little.
Alexander Chase
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens
The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
Catherine the Great
Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.
John Tillotson
The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom, in the heart.
William Hazlitt
Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom.
John Milton
No man was ever wise by chance.
Seneca
A wise man learns by the mistakes of others, a fool by his own.
Latin Proverb
The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
Thomas Huxley
The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy.
William Penn
The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.
Solomon Ibn Gabriol
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
William James
Nature and wisdom never are at strife.
Plutarch
There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind has achieved the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith
There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.
Henry Ford
We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right.
Aldous Huxley
The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain.
Kahil Gibran
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.
Michel de Montaigne
A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life.
Samuel Butler
Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving.
Dennis Waitley
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon
The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success.
Henry Ward Beecher
The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business–or almost anywhere else for that matter.
Lee Iacocca
Live up to the best that is in you: Live noble lives, as you all may, in whatever condition you may find yourselves.
Henry W. Longfellow
What you are must always displease you, if you would attain to that which you are not.
Saint Augustine
If you have great talents, industry will improve them; If moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiencies. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor: nothing is ever to be attained without it.
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Practice yourself in little things, and thence proceed to greater.
Epictetus
Slumber not in the tents of your fathers! The world is advancing. Advance with it!
Mazzini
Discontent is the source of all trouble, but also of all progress, in individuals and nations.
Berthold Auerbach
What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others.
Immanuel Kant
The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self; to render our consciousness its own light and its own mirror.
Frederich Leopold von Hardenberg
Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary; one either progresses or retrogrades.
Mme. Du Deffand
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.
Oliver Goldsmith
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Socrates
All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident.
Schopenhauer
I have one major rule: everybody is right. More specifically, everybody— including me— has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace.
Ken Wilber
In fact, at this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the 'edge of history.' There would be a real New Age.
Ken Wilber
I don't believe that any human mind is capable of 100 percent error... Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.
Ken Wilber
Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.
Tyron Edwards
Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.
Thomas Dewar
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
Leo Rosten
You will never find time for anything. If you want the time, you must make it.
Charles Buxton
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
Ivan Turgenev
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula Le Guin
All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
Brian Tracy
One of the best uses of your time is to increase your competence in your key result areas.
Brian Tracy
We are each of us angels, with only one wing. We can only fly by embracing each other.
Lutiano
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Losers visualize the penalties of failure and winners visualize the rewards of success.
Rod Gilbert
We judge a man's wisdom by his hope.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Charles A Beard
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
Helen Keller
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.
Abraham Lincoln
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
Benjamin Disraeli
Look for good in every person and every situation. You’ll almost always find it.
Brian Tracy
Excellence is not a destination, it is a continuous journey that never ends.
Brian Tracy
Men with sight, see things as they are.
Men with "insight", see things as they could be.
Joseph P.Martino
In the grand game and art called life, it is wise of one to cultivate an environment of: understanding, knowledge and purpose of heart to reach and attain all your noble and lofty goals in life, unlike others who persue and chase vague,shallow and other meaningless trivial pursuits.
Joseph P.Martino
There is no such thing as boredom for the person who cultivates, trains and develops his mind, to act and serve, as his own personal playground.
Joseph P.Martino
Happiness and contentment in life reside less in the transient mansions, spa's and international playgrounds of the rich, but more in the permanent residence of the heart and mind.
Joseph P. Martino
Life is like riding a bicycle, you don’t fall off unless you plan to stop peddling.
Claude Pepper
My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.
Richard Branson
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
Oprah Winfrey
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Robert Byrne
A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.
William Shedd
The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose.
Rick Warren
The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.
Ben Stein
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - a waif, a nothing, a no man.
Thomas Carlyle
All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
James Thurber
Purpose is what gives life a meaning.
Charles H. Perkhurst
Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.
Jim Rohn
Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
Robert Heinlein
You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.
Eric Hoffer
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
The Dalai Lama
Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller
A man is not rightly conditioned until he is a happy, healthy, and prosperous being; and happiness, health, and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer of the man with his surroundings.
James Allen
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
Aristotle
Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.
Henry Ford
Happiness... it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
Vincent Van Gogh
Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.
Napoleon Hill
Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows that it brings abundance to drive away hunger.
Saint Basil
When you are grateful fear disappears and abundance appears.
Anthony Robbins
The harvest of old age is the recollection and abundance of blessing previously secured.
Cicero
Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.
Wayne Dyer
Be generous! Give to those you love; give to those who love you; give to the fortunate; give to the unfortunate - yes, give especially to those you don't want to give. You will receive abundance for your giving. The more you give, the more you will have!
W. Clement Stone
There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother; she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.
Bourke Coekran
Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Winston Churchill
Life is a field of unlimited possibilities.
Deepak Chopra
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Thomas Edison
We can't afford to waste tears on might-have-beens. We need to turn the tears into sweat that can take us to what can be.
Denis Waitley
Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.
Brendan Francis
The most drastic and usually the most effective remedy for fear is direct action.
William Burnham
Action eradicates fear. No matter what you fear, positive, self-affirming action can diminish or completely cancel that which you are fearful of.
Mark Victor Hansen
Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
Conrad Hilton
Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it that makes a difference.
Nolan Bushnell
Act with purpose, courage, confidence, competence and intelligence until these qualities 'lock in' to your subconscious mind.
Brian Tracy
Nothing will work unless you do.
John Wooden
Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.
Norman Vincent Peale
When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder.
William Joseph Slim
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, to one who is striking at the root.
Henry D. Thoreau
A great many people experience the movement from one century to the next, but a minuscule number of people experience the movement from one millennium to the next.
Neale Donald Walsch
A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation.
Neale Donald Walsch
And because we are, somehow, better than they, we get to go to heaven and they don't. Christians will tell you outright that they believe that.
Neale Donald Walsch
And if we're all one, we need to stop our competition with each other. Most of the decisions we make are about survival and winning.
Neale Donald Walsch
And we're seeing a higher level of consciousness and many more opportunities for people to challenge their present ways of thinking and move into a grander and larger experience of who they really are.
Neale Donald Walsch
Glorify who you are today, do not condemn who you were yesterday, and dream of who you can be tomorrow.
Neale Donald Walsch
I was told to challenge every spiritual teacher, every world leader to utter the one sentence that no religion, no political party, and no nation on the face of the earth will dare utter: 'Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way'.
Neale Donald Walsch
FEAR is an acronym in the English language for "False Evidence Appearing Real"
Neale Donald Walsch
Glorify who you are today, do not condemn who you were yesterday, and dream of who you can be tomorrow.
Neale Donald Walsch
The secret of business is to know something that
nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis
The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.
C.S. Lewis
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom. [This is] the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and character.
Ayn Rand
Rules cannot substitute for character.
Alan Greenspan
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically… Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
Bertrand Russell
You must behave as if your every act, even the smallest, impacted a thousand people for a hundred generations. Because it does.
Gottfried Müller
The big print giveth, and the small print taketh away.
Unknown
The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully.
Paul Kurtz
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London
An acute first-class brain is the finest asset anyone can have- and, if we want to be happy, it is an asset we must exploit to the uttermost.
Cicero
The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
William James
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
Bertolt Brecht
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
Francis Bacon
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
Charles Kingsley
Is it because you are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that you listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference?
Thomas Paine
Hell is the impossibility of reason.
from Oliver Stone's PLATOON
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
Thomas A. Edison
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
Thoreau
No one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and that the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life, although even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. Yet this conviction, clear as it is, needs to be strengthened and given deeper roots through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not a important as keeping the resolutions you have made already.
Seneca
Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
Salvador Dali
The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.
Confucius
One of the best ways to properly evaluate and adapt to the many environmental stresses of life is to simply view them as normal. The adversity and failures in our lives, if adapted to and viewed as normal corrective feedback to use to get back on target, serve to develop in us an immunity against anxiety, depression, and the adverse responses to stress. Instead of tackling the most important priorities that would make us successful and effective in life, we prefer the path of least resistance and do things simply that will relieve our tension, such as shuffling papers and majoring in minors.
Denis Waitley
Guilt is never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.
Edmund Burke
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Marcus Aurelius
Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take calculated risk - and to act.
Maxwell Maltz
We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
Frank Tibolt
We live very close together. So, our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.
The Dali Lama
There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
By the word simplicity, is not always meant folly or ignorance; but often, pure and upright Nature, free from artifice, craft or deceitful ornament.
Ben Franklin
Here is the test to find if your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.
Richard Bach
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes.
Kenneth Hildebrand
Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness.
David Augsburger
Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.
Eddie Rickenbacker
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.
Albert Einstein
Vain is the word of a philosopher, by which no mortal suffering is healed. Just as medicine confers no benefit if it does not drive away bodily, disease, so is philosophy useless if it does not drive away the suffering of the mind.
Epicurus
You have been given your own work to do. Get to it right now, do your best at it, and don't be concerned with who is watching you. Create your own merit.
Epictetus
When you are physically 'stuck', remember that you are still spiritually FREE.
Ros Stiles
When I was lost and alone I finally took the time to know myself. The discovery was worth the discomfort.
desim.com
To live with dignity we must first discover our fundamental beliefs and then live by them.
deism.com
Never depend on the admiration of others. There is no strength in it. Personal merit cannot be derived from an external source. It is not to be found in your personal associations, nor can it be found in the regard of other people, even people who love you, will not necessarily agree with your ideas, understand you, or share your enthusiasms. Grow up! Who cares what other people think about you!
deism.com
Prudent people look beyond the incident itself and seek to form the habit of putting it to good use.
deism.com
Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.
deism.com
Begin at once a program of self-mastery. But start modestly, with the little things that bother you. Has your child spilled something? Have you misplaced your wallet? Say to yourself, 'Coping calmly with this inconvenience is the price I pay for my inner serenity, for freedom from perturbation; you don't get something for nothing.'
deism.com
It is much better to die of hunger unhindered by grief and fear than to live affluently beset with worry, dread, suspicion, and unchecked desire.
deism.com
Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.
deism.com
Instead of averting your eyes from the painful events of life, look at them squarely and contemplate them often. By facing the realities of death, infirmity, loss, and disappointment, you free yourself of illusions and false hopes and you avoid miserable, envious thoughts.
deism.com
Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.
deism.com
If you want to live a wise life, live it on your own terms and in your own eyes.
deism.com
Content yourself with being a lover of wisdom, a seeker of the truth. Return and return again to what is essential and worthy.
deism.com
In trying to please other people, we find ourselves misdirected toward what lies outside our sphere of influence. In doing so we lose our hold on our life's purpose.
deism.com
Why then do you feel no shame in giving your precious mind over to any person who might wish to influence you? Think twice before you give up your own mind to someone who may revile you, leaving you confused and upset.
deism.com
When we remember that our aim is spiritual progress, we return to striving to be our best selves. This is how happiness is won.
deism.com
Evil does not naturally dwell in the world, in events, or in people. Evil is a by-product of forgetfulness, laziness, or distraction: it arises when we lose sight of our true aim in life.
deism.com
Happiness and blessedness do not belong to abundance of riches or exalted position or offices or power, but to freedom from pain and gentleness of feeling and a state of mind that sets limits that are in accordance with nature.
deism.com
It is impossible for the one who instills fear to remain free from fear.
deism.com
A person is made unhappy either by fear or by endless and vain desire. The person who curbs these can attain for himself the blessed gift of reason.
deism.com
Great abundance is heaped up as the result of brutalizing labor, but a miserable life is the result.
deism.com
The mean soul is puffed up by successes, but brought down by adversity.
deism.com
By love of true philosophy we are delivered from every disturbing and painful desire.
deism.com
That which creates unsurpassable joy is the removal of a great evil.
deism.com
If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.
deism.com
Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth.
deism.com
Whatever there is of God and goodness in the universe, it must work itself out and express itself through us. We cannot stand aside and let God do it.
deism.com
I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.
deism.com
I appeal to all men and women, whether they be eminent or humble, to declare that they will refuse to give any further assistance to war or the preparation of war.
deism.com
I believe serious progress (in the abolition of war) can be achieved only when men become organized on an international scale and refuse, as a body, to enter military or war service.
deism.com
Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.
deism.com
True nonviolence is an impossibility without the possession of unadulterated fearlessness.
deism.com
Mankind has to get out of violence only through nonviolence.
deism.com
It is beneath human dignity to lose one's individuality and become a mere cog in the machine.
deism.com
The greatest of man's spiritual needs is the need to be delivered from the evil and falsity that are in himself and in his society.
deism.com
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
deism.com
Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
deism.com
To a true artist, only that face is beautiful which, quite apart from its exterior, shines with the truth within the soul.
deism.com
A reformer has to sail not with the current. Very often he has to go against it even though it may cost him his life.
deism.com
The acquisition of the spirit of nonresistance is a matter of long training in self-denial and appreciation of the hidden forces within ourselves. It changes one's outlook on life . . . It is the greatest force because it is the highest expression of the soul.
deism.com
When we see we have gone wrong, it is our duty to retrace our footsteps and proceed again by the right path.
deism.com
Think of three things, whence you came, where you are going, and to whom you must account.
desim.com
Speak little, do much.
deism.com
In the present weak state of human nature, surrounded as we are on all sides with ignorance and error, it little becomes poor, fallible man to be positive and dogmatical in his opinions.
deism.com
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
deism.com
At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. Here is a sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes.
deism.com
All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.
deism.com
Nothing shall warp me from the belief that everyone is a lover of truth.
deism.com
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
deism.com
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
deism.com
Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.
deism.com
Anger is as much a mark of weakness as is grief; in both of them men receive a wound, and submit to a defeat.
deism.com
Firstly, avoid all actions that are haphazard or purposeless; and secondly, let every action aim solely at the common good.
deism.com
For a life that is sound and secure, cultivate a thorough insight into things and discover their essence, matter, and cause; put your whole heart into doing what is just, and speaking what is true; and for the rest, know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them.
deism.com
Why do you hunger for length of days? Is it to experience sensations and desires, or increase or cessation of growth? Is it to make use of the powers of speech or of thought? Does any of these things seem really worth coveting? Then if you think them beneath your notice, press on towards the final goal of all - which is the following of reason and of God. But to prize this, you must remember, is incompatible with any feelings of resentment that death will rob you of the others.
deism.com
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other and I trust I never shall.
deism.com
It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
deism.com
To teach us how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.
deism.com
In life generally, the contemplation and study of Nature are far superior to the whole range of other human activities.
deism.com
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
Albert Einstein
Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness are, by their own nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral, and subject to chance.
Arthur Schopenhauer
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.
Aldous Huxley
My religion is kindness.
The Dalai Lama
God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.
Meister Eckhart
You have no cause for anything but gratitude and joy.
Buddhist teaching
The burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness.
Sosan, The Third Zen Patriarch
Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water.
At that moment, all fear of death disappears.
Thich Nhat Hanh
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Shakespeare - Hamlet
The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism.
Sir William Osler, M.D.
We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
H.L. Mencken
Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.
Mahatma Ghandi
Because no one sees the truth does not make it untrue.
Mahatma Ghandi
Once you master yourself there is no need to master anything else.
Ketan Patel
Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Max Ehrmann, Desiderata
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 1963
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
The longest journey is the journey inwards of him who has chosen his destiny, who has started upon his quest for the source of his being.
Dag Hammarskjold
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
Mahatma Gandhi
Most sermons sound to me like commercials - but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.
Mignon McLaughlin
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix
The final obstacle is the belief that there is an obstacle.
Kai Ski
The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.
John Mortimer
Politician, flag & priest. In all the world I love them least. When nations wage their bloody wars, 'tis they alone have been the cause.
Pete Smith
There is no good or evil, there is only power.
J. K. Rowling
Giving others the freedom to be stupid is one of the most important and hardest steps to take in spiritual progress. Conveniently the opportunity to take that step is all around us every day.
Thaddeus Golas
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Rich Cook
No one is thinking if everyone is thinking alike.
Porter B. Williamson
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
Dalai Lama
Tolerance and tranquility are two characteristics of true love.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Do not look at the deeds of others, but be worthy masters of your own.
Vissarion
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
Confucius
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
Thomas Carlyle
When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
Peter O' Tool
In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
Mark Twain
Patriotism is to love ones country all the time, and the government when they deserve it.
Mark Twain
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
George Orwell
Consciousness is a singular for which there is no plural.
Erwin Schrodinger
Death and dying provide a meeting-point between the Tibetan Buddhist and modern scientific traditions. I believe both have a great deal to contribute to each other on the level of understanding and of practical benefit.
Dalai Lama
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
I put it to you that both you and I are atheists. It is just that I believe in one fewer gods than you.
When you finally come to understand why you don’t believe in all those other gods then you will understand why I don’t believe in yours.
Anon
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell
Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Jawaharial Nehru
All descriptions of reality are temporary hypotheses.
The Buddha Guatama
I would rather be an optimist and a fool than be a pessimist and correct.
Albert Einstein
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
Bertrand Russell
Suffering is temporary, enlightenment is forever.
Buddha
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Sir Winston Churchill
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.
Frederick Douglass
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
Anon
Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?
Arthur C. Clarke
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Defiled by passion, the mind is not released. Defiled by ignorance, wisdom does not develop. Thus from the fading of passion is there release of awareness. From the fading of ignorance is there release of wisdom.
Anguttara Nikaya
What is a good man?
Simply one whose life is useful to the world.
And a bad man is simply one whose life is harmful to others.
There are, however, those who are harmful and yet enjoy a good reputation, and who manage to profit by a show of usefulness.
These are the worst of all.
Chang Chao, 15th Century
Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organisation disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present.
Carl Jung
As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.
The Buddha
The burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness
Sosan, The Third Zen Patriarch
Hatred is not appeased by hatred in this world. By love alone is it appeased. This is a law Eternal.
The Buddha
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
Spinoza
People are disturbed not by things but by the view they take of them.
Epictetus, c 200 AD
Be kind.
Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
Phyllos
The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
Albert Einstein
God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.
Meister Eckhart
There is only consciousness. There is no individual apart from consciousness who is conscious.
Adyashanti
Our species is far too clever to survive without wisdom
E.F.Schumacker
Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold, the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.
Democritus
The only devils in this world are those running around inside our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought.
Mahatma Gandhi
"I am" is the name of God.
God is none other than the Self.
Ramana Maharshi
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Shakespeare - Hamlet
Those wise ones who see that the consciousness within themselves is the same consciousness within all conscious beings, attain eternal peace.
The Upanishads
There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world are seeking each other, so that the world may come into being.
Teilhard de Chardin
Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water.
At that moment, all fear of death disappears.
Thich Nhat Hanh
If thou knowest thine own self, thou knowest God.
Ibn-Al-Arabi
I have learned, in whatsoever state I am in, therewith to be content.
St. Paul
There is nothing more painful than walking around with bitterness in your heart.
Hugh Prather
You have no cause for anything but gratitude and joy.
Bhuddist Teaching
"Are you a God?" they asked the Buddha.
"No," he replied.
"Are you an angel, then?"
"No."
"A saint?"
"No"
"Then what are you?"
Replied the Buddha, "I am awake."
The Buddha
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
Alan Watts
The one "I am" at the heart of all creation, Thou art the light of life.
Shvetashvatara Upanishad
We make a living from what we get;
we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill
Enlightenment is beyond self-improvement and spiritual seeking. It is the final resolution of a case of mistaken identity. It is the direct recognition of your eternal nature and the seeing through of who you have falsely believed yourself to be.
Gary Crowley
The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Definition of Wisdom
Wisdom is often meant as the ability and desire to make choices that can gain approval in a long-term examination by many people. In this sense, to label a choice “wise” implies that the action or inaction was strategically correct when judged by widely-held values.However true wisdom cannot be measured in terms of popular consensus.
Wisdom of Solomon
Wisdom, also known as the Wisdom of Solomon, is one of the deuterocanonical books of the Bible that are not translations of Hebrew originals. Although it is written as if by Solomon, its language and ideas alike are entirely of Greek origin. For this reason it is considered the most classical Greek in the Septuagint. It is usually dated to the 1st or 2nd century BC.
Conventional Wisdom
Conventional Wisdom is a term coined by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, used to describe certain ideas or explanations that are generally accepted as true by the public.
Wisdom Literature
Wisdom Literature is the a genre of literature common in the Ancient Near East. This genre is characterized by praise of God, often in poetic form, and by sayings of wisdom intended to teach about God and about virtue.
Ageless Wisdom
The Ageless Wisdom is a non-religious approach to spirituality, the nature of the Soul, and the development of consciousness. Also known as the Perennial Philosophy or prisca theologia, the Wisdom is a general consensus from all cultures and all times about the Spiritual Reality of our lives as human Souls incarnate.
Word of Wisdom
Word of Wisdom is regarded among Charismatics and Pentecostals to be the supernatural revelation of wisdom through the power of the Holy Spirit. This gift is noted in 1 Corinthians 12:8.
See also:
Fresh Wisdom - Breakthrough to Enlightenment
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