Old Wisdom Quotes

• By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

  Confucius

  Wise, Wisdom, Attitude

  "Words of Wisdom to Live By". Book by Alfred Armand Montapert, 1986.

  349 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

  William Arthur Ward

  Motivational, Leadership, Basketball

  William Arthur Ward (1968). “Thoughts of a Christian Optimist: The Words of William Arthur Ward”

  337 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

  Satchel Paige

  Happy Birthday, Baseball, Fun

  Quoted in Garson Kanin, It Takes a Long Time to Become Young (1978)

  172 Copy quote

  Show source

• Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.

  Jimi Hendrix

  Life, Music, Beautiful

  66 Copy quote

• God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "How Obama's favorite theologian shaped his first year in office" by John Blake, www.cnn.com. February 5, 2010.

  213 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.

  Arthur Wing Pinero

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

  48 Copy quote

• The older I grow, the more I find myself alone.

  Alberto Giacometti

  Solitude, Listening, Age

  22 Copy quote

• The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Birthday, Wisdom

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.311, Cosimo, Inc.

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• My high school had been a renovated old hospital, so when I first came to the UCLA campus in the spring of 1965, I was immediately impressed by the classic northern Italian architecture that was mixed with futuristic ultra-modern buildings. The classic architecture gave it the heft of old wisdom while the modernistic look inspired hope for the future.

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Spring, School, Italian

  Source: www.sbnation.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love the inappropriateness of age-old wisdom in modern slang. These things are all so wonderful to me.

  Doseone

  Age, Wonderful, Modern

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whenever a mind is simple and receives an old wisdom, old things pass away,--means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,--one as much as another.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Teacher, Fall, Future

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.17, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Old wisdom out of the cluster of gathering shadows.

  George Mackay Brown

  Shadow, Gathering, Clusters

  7 Copy quote

• I like the old wisdom--puns, riddles, spells, proverbs.

  Mason Cooley

  Wisdom, Riddle, Pun

  4 Copy quote

• A wise, joyous bookit unfolds the knowledge and the beauty of the two lives it embraces-old wisdom and young discover, intertwining like vines.

  Rex Reed

  Wise, Two, Vines

  7 Copy quote

• The general notions about human understanding...which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture, they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Encouragement, Buddhist, Discovery

  10 Copy quote

• Led by myself and two colleagues, the course offers a newly developed model of spiritual direction that draws on both the age-old wisdom of the church and more recent perspectives. I call it the Passion/Wisdom Model of Spiritual Direction, and I see it as offering the opportunity for our interior worlds and supernatural reality to meet.

  Larry Crabb

  Spiritual, Passion, Opportunity

  4 Copy quote

• When science shall have effectually demonstrated to us the origin of matter, and proved the fallacy of the occultists and old philosophers who held (as their descendants now hold) that matter is but one of the correlations of spirit, then will the world of skeptics have a right to reject the old Wisdom, or throw the charge of obscenity in the teeth of the old religions.

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Teeth, World, Matter

  H. P. Blavatsky (1994). “Isis Unveiled: (Two Volumes in a Slipcase)”, p.583, Quest Books

  10 Copy quote

  Show source