Wisdom; Wonder/Mystery/Awe; Work/Working; Worry; Writing/Writers       WISDOM The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson He that thinks himself the wisest is generally the least so. ~C.C. Colton Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. ~John Lubbock A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable. ~Admiral Richard E. Byrd A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men. ~Unknown We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom. ~Michel de Montaigne We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. ~Stephen Vincent Benet It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. ~Ingersoll Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk. ~Doug Larson One's first step in wisdom is to question everything and one's last is to come to terms with everything. We judge of man's wisdom by his hope. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Logic is the beginning of wisdom; not the end. ~Spock (Star Trek) Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. ~Proverbs 17:28 Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. ~Martin Fischer Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. ~Plato Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one's being. ~Orison S. Marden Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it. ~Albert Einstein We should not be swayed by our theories to give up common sense too easily. ~Karl Popper Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. ~Lin Yutang The biggest difficulty with mankind today is that our knowledge has increased so much faster than our wisdom. ~Frank Whitmore I'd rather know some of the questions than all of the answers. ~James Thurber Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with the facts, but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our mind. ~Benjamin Disraeli Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone. ~Unknown The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise man grows it under his feet. ~James Oppenheim I am not young enough to know everything. ~Oscar Wilde If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. ~Robert Green Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. ~Andre Gide He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes. But he who never asks a question remains a fool forever. ~Tom J. Connelly Men are four: He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool - shun him; He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple - teach him; He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep - wake him; He who knows and knows he knows is wise - follow him! ~Lady Burton It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. ~Octavio Paz It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. ~Henry David Thoreau Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. ~Immanuel Kant To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom. ~Elbert Hubbard Nothing is as frightening as ignorance in action. ~Goethe Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. ~Confucius These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future. ~Vernon Cooper Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all. ~Arthur C. Clarke A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. ~Francis Bacon The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see. ~Ayn Rand We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. ~Stephen Vincent Benét When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. ~Unknown (attributed to Mark Twain) Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to practical use. ~Unknown There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul. ~Arnold Bennett, British novelist Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom. ~Theodore Rubin The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth. ~Pierre Abelard Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. ~William Saroyan Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late. ~Benjamin Franklin Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant. ~Stephen Sigmund By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. ~Confucius You will know the clever by their answers; but the wise you will know by their questions. ~Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel prize winner top of page WONDER/MYSTERY/AWE The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. ~Albert Einstein As knowledge increases, wonder deepens. ~Charles Morgan Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity. ~R. I. Fitzhenry To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. ~Jose Ortega y Gasset If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. ~Rachel Carson If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change. ~Buddha He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. ~M. C. Escher Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge. ~Abraham J. Heschel Wonder is music heard in the heart, is voiceless. ~Rosemary Dobson If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change. ~Buddha Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess. ~Margaret Mead If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. ~Rachel Carson From wonder into wonder existence opens. ~Lao Tzu Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young. ~Mark Twain It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility. ~Rachel Carson The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder. ~G.K. Chesterton Life has loveliness to sell, all beautiful and splendid things, blue waves whitened on a cliff, soaring fire that sways and sings, and children's faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup. ~Sara Teasdale Wherever life takes us, there are always moments of wonder. ~Jimmy Carter To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. ~Jose Ortega y Gasset The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. ~Ralph W. Sockman Take time to marvel at the wonders of life. ~Gary W. Fenchuk WORK/WORKING Where our work is, there let our joy be. ~Tertullian Your work is to discover your work, and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. ~Buddha Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing. ~Thomas Alva Edison Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. ~Samuel Butler All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. ~Martin Luther King Jr. Do what you love and love what you’re doing, and you’ll never work another day in your life. ~Unknown I never feel age...If you have creative work, you don't have age or time. ~Louise Nevelson Work is love made visible. ~Kahil Gibran top of page WORRY Worry gives a small thing a big shadow. ~Swedish proverb Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is its own troubles. ~Jesus Christ WRITING/WRITERS A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others. ~Leo Rosten The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it. ~Elizabeth Drew But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. ~Lord Byron Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed. ~Leo Rosten Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph. ~Mark Twain Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart... ~William Wordsworth My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. ~Ernest Hemingway In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed. ~Leo Rosten To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make. ~Truman Capote top of page

 

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