If you listen well enough, even the emptiness will whisper wisdom.
Wisdom Quotes
“All I know is that I know nothing” is flagged as misattributed to Socrates. The nearest thing in Plato is the end of Book I of the Republic, where Socrates concludes that he knows nothing about what justice is. That is a narrower claim than the slogan, and part of an argument rather than a statement about himself.
Most of the entries here come from poets and playwrights, with Shakespeare, Edward Young and Pope at the top, which fits: wisdom is rarely stated in a sentence of its own, more often spoken by a character or tucked into a couplet. For the sourced ones, William James in The Principles of Psychology (1890): “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” Or Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790): “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”
Ask counsel of both times—of the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.
Let fools the studious despise,
There's nothing lost by being wise.
Perhaps that is the only wisdom there really is, young Mage: that our choices matter.
Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in 's own house.
Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
But to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom.
To that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety.
On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows,
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.