Wisdom Quotes

The best minds across centuries have wrestled with what it means to be wise. These quotes capture their hard-won insights.

64329 quotes

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"Misery is the mother of truth."
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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"To understand a person, one must understand their sorrow."
Fyodor Dostoevsky
F
"The intellect without the heart is a weapon."
Fyodor Dostoevsky
L
"If you look for perfection, you'll never be content."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"Mistakes are the necessary stepping stones in the path of wisdom."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"True life begins where the small selfish thoughts end."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"We are taught to understand life backwards but we must live it forwards."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"It is not so much a matter of thinking as of feeling the truth."
Leo Tolstoy
A
"Man will become better when you show him what he is like."
Anton Chekhov
A
"Don't search for phenomena, but observe what is in front of you."
Anton Chekhov
A
"Incompetence and immodesty go hand in hand."
Anton Chekhov
A
"Do not consider painful what is good for you."
Anton Chekhov
A
"To understand oneself is the greatest challenge."
Anton Chekhov
I
"The heart of another is a dark forest."
Ivan Turgenev
I
"The one who is prudent may be cold, but they are never wretched."
Ivan Turgenev
I
"To understand the world, one must not be in too great a hurry to define it."
Ivan Turgenev
I
"The heart knows reasons that reason knows nothing of."
Ivan Turgenev
I
"An old man is twice a child."
Ivan Turgenev
W
"The best way to live is to act as if you are already dead."
William Butler Yeats
W
"All wisdom comes with eyeballs in the head."
William Butler Yeats
W
"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."
William Butler Yeats
W
"I cannot foretell the future because I am not the God."
William Butler Yeats
"Getting tired of thinking about living."
Samuel Beckett
"Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived."
Samuel Beckett
O
"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Oscar Wilde
O
"Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are."
Oscar Wilde
O
"As one gets older, one has more respect for experience and less for imagination."
Oscar Wilde
O
"Thank God I have never felt infinite expectation."
Oscar Wilde
O
"Youth is wasted on the young."
Oscar Wilde
F
"Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."
Fyodor Dostoevsky