Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

There is only a finger’s difference between a wise man and a fool.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

Forty to 60 I would say is your prime. That’s when you know the most, you’ve seen the most, you understand the most, and you still have some physical energy.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

The real truths of life are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear, and then recognize them. I say ‚recognize‘ because you’re not… it’s not new.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

Both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom: the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

No one but a fool is always right.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

Whatever is well said by another, is mine.

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Cunning… is but the low mimic of wisdom.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.