Top 100 Great Wise Quotes
#1. Insofar as we have freedoms, it's not because some great wise Founding Fathers granted them to us. It's because people like us insisted on exercising those freedoms - by doing exactly what we're doing here - before anyone was willing to acknowledge that they had them.
David Graeber
#2. When the human being sings he lends expression to the great wise ways in which the world was made.
Rudolf Steiner
#3. Throughout all history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers,
and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things.
It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement. We become what we think about.
Earl Nightingale
#4. And Jasmine, royal princess and daughter of the sultan..." the little old religious man trailed off, confused. "I'm sorry, daughter. I don't remember all of your names. Rose of Agrabah? Twice Great-Granddaughter of Elisheba the Wise?"
"I think it was Elisheba," Jasmine said thoughtfully.
Liz Braswell
#5. It is but too common, of late, to condemn the acts of our predecessors and to pronounce them unjust, unwise, or unpatriotic from not adverting to the circumstances under which they acted. Thus, to judge is to do great injustice to the wise and patriotic men who preceded us.
John C. Calhoun
#6. The starting point for building great relationships is making wise decisions about who we allow close to us. We need people who will build us up and take us forward, and good friends will do just that.
Brian Houston
#7. But as a wise and great teacher once explained so patiently, all good stories - stories that touch your soul, stories that change your nature, stories that cause you to become a better person from their telling-these stories always contain truth.
Camron Wright
#8. But the young sapper was already on his back, the rifle aimed, his eye almost brushing the beards of Noah and Abraham and the variety of demons until he reached the great face and was stilled by it, the face like a spear, wise, unforgiving.
Michael Ondaatje
#9. It is a queer thing. In a time of great need, when powerful leadership is demanded, the people - confused and excited - hear only the strident voices of the audacious, and refuse to listen to the voice of wisdom which, being wise, is temperate.
Lloyd C. Douglas
#11. A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.
Oliver Goldsmith
#12. Tears of tenderness and affection are no disparagement at all, even to great and wise men.
Matthew Henry
#14. Here again is one grand element of a preacher's success. He must labour by all means to be understood. It was a wise saying of Archbishop Usher, To make easy things seem hard is every man's work; but to make hard things easy is the work of a great preacher.
J.C. Ryle
#17. I tend to like to make my statements more in fashion than in beauty, because what I normally respond to is when someone looks really effortless and deconstructed, beauty-wise, and they're fashion is really grand. Someone like Kate Moss is a great example.
Blake Lively
#20. Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climatic conditions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise as it is ruthless.
Thomas Malthus
#21. But I already saw no great difference between the psyche and spirituality. To amass knowledge without becoming wise is not my idea of progress in therapy.
M. Scott Peck
#23. Tis well to borrow from the good and the great; 'Tis wise to learn: 'tis God-like to create!
John Godfrey Saxe
#24. Hitting a shorter club to these greens means a great, great deal. Younger players are so much more capable length-wise.
Ben Crenshaw
#25. Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#26. The best way to achieve great success is to learn from wise people. Use them extensively with love, gratitude, and humility.
Debasish Mridha
#28. The first
sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act
great. Before you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures
us, you must not look too good nor talk too wise.
Dale Carnegie
#29. While they read and talked together, there was opened before them the great book wherein God has written, in the language of mountain, and tree, and sky, and flower, and brook, the things that make truly wise those who pause to read.
Harold Bell Wright
#30. The wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#31. All the quiet corners of the world are the great temples for the wise and for the wisdom!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#32. The story is told of a famous German chemist that his marriage did not take place, because he forgot the hour of his wedding and went to the laboratory instead of to the church. He was wise enough to be satisfied with a single attempt and died at a great age unmarried
Sigmund Freud
#33. Things that are truly great need nothing from me, and to somehow think that they do speaks to my utter lack of greatness.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#34. The superior man cannot be known in little matters, but he may be entrusted with great concerns. The small man may not be entrusted with great concerns, but he may be known in little matters.
Confucius
#35. Marriage is a mystery that one would be wise not to solve too hastily.
Marve De Jong, Love And Other Follies Of The Great Families Of Old New York
Anna Godbersen
#36. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from.
Abraham Lincoln
#37. Only one thing surprises me more than the stupidity with which most men live their lives and that is the intellegence inherent in that stupidity. [ ... ] The wise man makes his life monotonous, for then even the tiniest accident becomes imbued with great significance.
Fernando Pessoa
#38. The Dalai Lama. He is a very wise man of great inner peace who believes that happiness is the purpose of our lives. Through his teachings and leadership, he continues to make this world a better place in which to live.
Sidney Sheldon
#39. May I be I is the only prayer
not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.
E. E. Cummings
#40. I know as a critic I'm required to have a well-armored heart. I must be a cynical wise guy to show my great sophistication. No pushover, me.
Roger Ebert
#41. The arch of heaven looks like an
upside-down cup, under which the wise
wander in vain. May your love for your beloved
be as great as the love of the bottle for the glass.
Look, how one gives and one receives, lip against
lip, the precious blood of the grapes.
Omar Khayyam
#42. Gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals and philosophers have all died of gout.
Thomas Sydenham
#43. Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal. Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood by all, but which the wise, and great, and good interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#44. I don't pretend to be wise, but I am observing, and I see a great deal more than you'd imagine. I'm interested in other people's experiences and inconsistencies, and, though I can't explain, I remember and use them for my own benefit.
Louisa May Alcott
#45. We could go to monasteries. I could show you people who are very wise and they have great willpower, but they're not happy. They lack balance. They take it all too seriously.
Frederick Lenz
#46. It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom; as either the traveler may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.
Henry David Thoreau
#49. I will do" gives you a great chance to win; "I will try" gives you a great chance to lose. Pick your words wisely.
Farshad Asl
#50. Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires makes a wise and a happy purchase.
John Balguy
#51. It is no more necessary that a man should remember the different dinners and suppers which have made him healthy, than the different books which have made him wise. Let us see the results of good food in a strong body, and the results of great reading in a full and powerful mind.
Sydney Smith
#52. If you're running to be president of the United States, you can't just tell people you're going to make America great again. I think you need to begin to explain exactly how you're going to do it policy-wise. We're not going to win a general election with a candidate that refuses to detail policy.
Marco Rubio
#54. Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
Walter Bagehot
#55. Every great accomplishments requires great grace and great enthusiasm.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#56. 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
#58. [We need] someone bold, to put himself at the head of the disaffected and rally them against the oppressor. Some great character who could captivate the people ... someone wise who could direct the actions of an unbridled and floating multitude.
Jean-Paul Marat
#59. He who thinks himself wise, O heavens! is a great fool.
Voltaire
#60. He who despises a poor man's wisdom has turned away great riches.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#61. his talk dwelt on walls and weapons, and the mustering of men; and he drew plans for great alliances and glorious victories to be; and he cast down Mordor, and became himself a mighty king, benevolent and wise. Suddenly
J.R.R. Tolkien
#63. The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be tempted to forego.
Samuel Johnson
#65. Wise men perish,
senseless men perish.
Death, the great equalizer
comes for both, takes both,
as eternity draws close,
and Christ comes forth.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#66. I'm doing great heart-wise. I get a complete stress test once a year, and those have gone well. I have stents in two arteries, and they are holding up. My other arteries haven't shown any additional clogging.
Alberto Salazar
#67. Imagine learning all the great wisdom of the world just so that you can get a job. What an absurdity. We should be learning all the great wisdom of the world in order to become wise.
Eddie Campbell
#68. When reconciling great hatred there will some remain. How can it be made good? Therefore the wise man accepts the debit side of the account and does not have to enforce payment from others.
Lao-Tzu
#69. Jack Wise he got the prize for being circumspect, which is the great big grown up way of saying he's correct.
Sara Loo
#70. I just think that Kimbo [Slice] in the future could be a great fighter. He's got the look and obviously he's got the marketability but skill-wise he really hasn't gotten an opportunity to settle in and develop on his skills.
Ken Shamrock
#71. Walking in the night is a great blessing for the wise souls who are deeply in love with the silence!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#72. All who have taken it upon themselves to rule over others have incurred hatred and unpopularity for a time; but if one has a great aim to pursue, this burden of envy must be accepted, and it is wise to accept it.
Pericles
#73. Beware of little expenses; A small leak will sink a great ship, as Poor Richard says; and again, Who dainties love, shall beggars prove; and moreover, Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them.
Benjamin Franklin
#74. We cannot be wise while in the grip of a deep fear ... This is why demagogues, when seeking our support, will first cause us to fear and hate, knowing when we are in the grip of a great fear, we will abandon common sense and wisdom, we will forsake the hard-won lessons of time and experience.
Philip Gulley
#76. Nothing great could ever be achieved, without personal force, determined spirit and self-confidence.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#77. When I first went to Vegas, there were just high-rollers and gamblers and the wise guys treated you great.
Don Rickles
#78. The honor paid to a wise man is a great good for those who honor him.
Epicurus
#79. She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale.
"DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN'S BODIES!" Alaska shouted.
Now he looked up. "Sorry. Perky breasts."
"That's not any better!
John Green
#80. If you have decided to sail to the sea with great courage and determination, even the storm on the horizon will step aside!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#82. The great benefactors of individuals and of communities are the enlightened educators: the wise-teaching, mental and moral instructors and exemplars of our times.
Dorothea Dix
#83. A wise traveler reaches his goal and rests," he continues. "The wanderer never reaches it, but with great lethargy of mind forever directs his hungry eyes before him.
Rod Dreher
#84. Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity ... and here I am, reborn.
Witold Gombrowicz
#85. The wise man seeks little joys, knowing that life is long and that his quota of great joys is distinctly limited.
William Feather
#86. The ego is entranced by ... names and ideas ... However names and concepts only block your perception of this Great Oneness. Therefore it is wise to ignore them. Those who live inside their egos are continually bewildered.
Laozi
#88. It neither is reason nor in any wise to be suffered that the young king, our master and kinsman, should be in the hands of custody of his mother's kindred, sequestered in great measure from our company and attendance, the which is neither honorable to his majesty nor unto us.
Richard III Of England
#89. I said that I loved the wise proverb, Brief, simple and deep; For it I'd exchange the great poem That sends us to sleep.
Bryan Procter
#91. The wise man, he said, lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas 'the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lack everything.
Seneca.
#92. He leaned his head in his hands, as if the burden he bore were too great for endurance. 'You are wise', he said, then raised his head and stared at her with unflinching hatred. 'I wish you were a foolish woman I could despise, damn you!
Marion Zimmer Bradley
#93. All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
John Piper
#94. She began to see that character is a better possession than money, rank, intellect, or beauty, and to feel that if greatness is what a wise man has defined it to be, 'truth, reverence, and good will,' then her friend Friedrich Bhaer was not only good, but great.
Louisa May Alcott
#95. Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately.
Edward Everett Hale
#96. Even in the middle of a hopeless darkness a light may suddenly reach you; keep your hope tightly and this great hope of yours will strongly attract the light onto you!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#99. Those who are weak in spirit, desire to make others weaker.
While the strong spirit, desire to empower others to be stronger.
Lailah Gifty Akita
