Who is the wise man? He who sees what’s going to be born.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

After many years of great mercy, after tasting of the powers of the world to come, we still are so weak, so foolish; but, oh! when we get away from self to God, there all is truth and purity and holiness, and our heart finds peace, wisdom, completeness, delight, joy, victory.

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

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

What one fool can understand, another can.

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

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.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

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.

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way – before one began.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

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

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

Silence is the mother of truth.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

He that sows thorns should never go barefoot.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.