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

D
"The best things in life are worth waiting for."
Doc Daneeka
N
"The heart knows truths the mind cannot articulate."
Natasha Rostova
M
"Happiness is a hard master."
Mustapha Mond
B
"Silence is golden when you cannot speak sense."
Bernard Marx
R
"You're not gonna go for that, Cheswick. That's not the way to handle it. You just stay cool."
Randle McMurphy
C
"The way I see it, the guy is not a fool. He's just trying to get by."
Cheswick
I
"Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness"
Ivan Karamazov
P
"Man cannot alter the past, but he can ruin the present by worrying over the future."
Pierre Bezukhov
N
"You can't live in the past, but you sure can learn from it."
Nurse Ratched
A
"Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it."
Atticus Finch
A
"Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
Atticus Finch
A
"Common sense is something this fellow didn't have, not even one iota."
Atticus Finch
A
"It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is."
Atticus Finch
M
"There are just some kind of men who—who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to walk around on this one."
Miss Maudie Atkinson
Y
"Insanity is contagious."
Yossarian
C
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you."
Chaplain Tappman
M
"Happiness is a hard master—particularly other people's happiness."
Mustapha Mond
J
"One is not wretched because one has been burnt, but because one has been burnt for nothing."
Jean Valjean
C
"A man who agrees to everything is useful to no one."
Chief Bromden
C
"We're all crazy here."
Cheswick
A
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view."
Atticus Finch
M
"It's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
Miss Maudie Atkinson
A
"It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is."
Atticus Finch
A
"We do the best we can with the light we have."
Atticus Finch
J
"Remember that, Chris, remember that!"
John the Savage
J
"I was trying to make him feel bad."
John the Savage
D
"Insanity is contagious."
Doc Daneeka
C
"The world is crazy and we're the only sane people in it."
Chaplain Tappman
D
"The heart has its own logic that reason cannot comprehend."
Dmitri Karamazov
P
"We cannot escape from ourselves."
Pierre Bezukhov