68 Wise Quotes For Inspiration

In life's journey, we often find ourselves seeking wisdom and inspiration to navigate through challenges, embrace opportunities, and grow into our best selves. Whether you're looking to uplift your spirits, gain new perspectives, or simply find a moment of reflection in your day, wise quotes have the power to touch our hearts and minds profoundly. In this compilation, we've gathered 68 of the most thoughtful and impactful wise quotes to help you draw motivation and insight from timeless words. Let these nuggets of wisdom serve as a guiding light on your path to personal and professional growth.

1. “The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most people, when it came down to it; there were very few who enjoyed flights of fantasy, and to have that sort of mind--one which enjoyed dry with and understood the absurd--left one in a shrinking minority.” - Alexander McCall Smith

2. “Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment. [Speaking of self-posed isolation in old age.]” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

3. “I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it.” - Cornel West

4. “Although I'm only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child, I feel quite indepedent of anyone.” - Anne Frank

5. “We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.” - Abraham Maslow

6. “Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.” - J.K. Rowling

7. “I am too young to be called wise and I am too old to be called young.” - Santosh Kalwar

8. “This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;And to do that well craves a kind of wit:He must observe their mood on whom he jests,The quality of persons, and the time,And, like the haggard, check at every featherThat comes before his eye. This is a practiseAs full of labour as a wise man's artFor folly that he wisely shows is fit;But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.” - William Shakespeare

9. “Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.” - Horace

10. “How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?” - Mary Wollstonecraft

11. “Least said, soonest mended," Toby quipped, quoting a saying Jess often used.” - Jean Little

12. “Don't do anything that you wouldn't feel comfortable reading about in the newspaper the next day.” - Joel Osteen

13. “The world gives us PLENTY of opportunities to strengthen our patience. While this truth can definitely be challenging, this is a good thing. Patience is a key that unlocks the door to a more fulfilling life. It is through a cultivation of patience that we become better parents, powerful teachers, great businessmen, good friends, and a live a happier life.” - Steve Maraboli

14. “I want to be a wise woman” - Lauren Hutton

15. “Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction—than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.” - Isaac Asimov

16. “Dieting is the only game where you win when you lose!” - Karl Lagerfeld

17. “And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart.” - John Green

18. “The only way to see everything, my dear, is to see it absolutely.” - Sherry Lynn Ferguson

19. “The way of the superior person is threefold; virtuous, they are free from anxieties; wise they are free from perplexities; and bold they are free from fear.” - Confucius

20. “Smartass Disciple: My master, please show me how to be a wise man!Master of Stupidity: I can't. But I can show you how to do something wisely.” - Toba Beta

21. “If a sheep eats bushes does it eat flowers too?A sheep eats whatever it finds.Even a flower with thorn?Even a flower with thorns.Then what's the good of thorns?” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

22. “Only wise men look for new wisdom.” - Toba Beta

23. “I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant” - William Saroyan

24. “The fools among us are presented to be wise and the wise among us are presented to be fools.” - Santosh Kalwar

25. “Your desire to advise other people, grows in line with your perception...that assumes you're wiser than them.” - Toba Beta

26. “In this world only the paranoid survive.” - Dean Koontz

27. “And we'll call you...hmmm. Pudge.""Huh?""Pudge," the Colonel said. "Because you're skinny. It's called irony, Pudge. Heard of it? Now, let's go get some cigarettes and start this year off right.” - John Green

28. “Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.” - Francis Bacon

29. “God doesn't expect us to be a walking encyclopedia of biblical knowledge. He wants us to know Him, to be in a relationship with Him. This means not only hearing but allowing our understanding of God to change the way we live. Like the wise builder who laid the foundation of his house on the rock, we learn to let our knowledge of God change us.” - Tyler Edwards

30. “Why is wisdom so fair? Why is beauty so wise?Because all else is temporary, while beauty and wisdom are the only real and constant aspects of truth that can be perceived by human means.And I don't mean the kind of surface beauty that fades with age, or the sort of shallow wisdom that gets lost in platitudes.True beauty grips your gut and squeezes your lungs, and makes you see with utmost clarity exactly what is before you.True wisdom then steps in, to interpret, illuminate, and form a life-altering insight.” - Vera Nazarian

31. “Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.” - Helen Keller

32. “Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean.""I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one.” - Loren Eiseley

33. “Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.” - Criss Jami

34. “The written word is all that stands between memory and oblivion. Without books as our anchors, we are cast adrift, neither teaching nor learning. They are windows on the past, mirrors on the present, and prisms reflected all possible futures. Books are lighthouses erected on the dark sea of time.” - Greg Weisman

35. “It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering.” - Jane Austen

36. “I don't agree that when you love, you are blind or fool. You just get wiser and see clearer what is best and of worth.” - Hark Herald Sarmiento

37. “Love the people who love you back.” - Laura Ruby

38. “Sometimes those who love most deeply can't get past the weight of their own feelings.” - James L. Halperin

39. “Lead looked to his hand and saw sparkling chunks of glass in the cracks of the road. He saw ants running around the cracks, infinitely small. His blood ran into the cracks, creating rivers for the industrious ants to perplex over. Lead smiled at the creatures, for he understood that there is no difference between them and us in their wanderings and labor.” - Nathan Yocum

40. “Then must you speakOf one that loved not wisely but too well,Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought,Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,Like the base Indian, threw a pearl awayRicher than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,Albeit unused to the melting mood,Drop tears as fast as the Arabian treesTheir medicinable gum. Set you down this,And say besides that in Aleppo once,Where a malignant and a turbaned TurkBeat a Venetian and traduced the state,I took by th' throat the circumcised dogAnd smote him thus.” - William Shakespeare

41. “And I would have answered:"The knottier the branch, the more twisted and misshapen, the more bent people called it, the harder it is to find it a place among the smooth planks, the more people agree that it should be thrown on the fire, the more useless it is, the more unsuitable for anything except letting one's imagination run riot, the more I covet it, the more I yearn to weigh it in my hand, the more I long to let my whittling knife be guided by its knots and veins...Yes, bring that piece to me...” - Sjón

42. “Make your lives a masterpiece, you only get one canvas.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

43. “Johannes had once said that violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easer to use your hands to strike a blow than to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to the problem.” - Anne Holm

44. “There's always something when you're at fault, too, and that fault you must discover and learn to recognize and take the consequences of it.” - Anne Holm

45. “Wisdom comes from reflection.” - Deborah Day

46. “If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.” - Criss Jami

47. “I believe in only one thing, the power of human will.” - Joseph Stalin

48. “Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.” - A.J.P. Taylor

49. “The dark hills, with the darker spruces marching over them, looked grim on early falling nights, but Ingleside bloomed with firelight and laughter, though the winds come in from the Atlantic singing of mournful things. "Why isn't the wind happy, Mummy?" asked Walter one night. "Because it is remembering all the sorrow of the world since it began," answered Anne.” - L.M. Montgomery

50. “Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have old maidenhood thrust upon them ," parodied Miss Lavendar whimsically.” - L.M. Montgomery

51. “No evil being was ever wise: they are all against every wise man's critics.” - A Gentlemen

52. “Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence.” - Jodi Picoult

53. “Some People Are Wise, And Some Are Otherwise.” - Unknown 9

54. “Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart.” - Johann Von Schiller

55. “It's just hard now because... you're jealous. But your heart is so generous and warm, it will melt the bad feelings away." I am 100 percent positive that my mom is the wisest mother in the world.” - Jane O'Connor

56. “Wise are my ways witty my actions” - N A Parnham

57. “HONOR ways did not won the WAR” - رامي عمار

58. “Surely this is what death would be like: nothingness, oblivion, as the world continued to turn, heedless of her absence.” - Meredith Duran

59. “I admit, that the brain does not govern the body as well as one might wish- else all men would be saints and hell would be empty of lechers.” - Meredith Duran

60. “Even a God finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time.” - Tina Smith

61. “It's said that a wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns from others' mistakes. But the wisest person of all learns from others's successes.” - John C. Maxwell

62. “I was always an unusual girl.My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean.” - Lana Del Rey

63. “Why is it that at the very moment I need to appear graceful I stumble and fall like a klutz, as though this scene had never played through my mind differently a million times?” - Richelle E. Goodrich

64. “A new day: Be open enough to see opportunities. Be wise enough to be grateful. Be courageous enough to be happy.” - Steve Maraboli

65. “Be beautiful if you can, wise if you want to, but be respected - that is essential.” - Anna Gould

66. “We all look. The lucky find. The wise accept.” - Nora Roberts

67. “If you are a sparrow, don’t attack the eagle; be wise! If you are an eagle, don’t attack the sparrow; be just!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

68. “If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren’t reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me. But when the morning comes, I realize that there’s nothing to be done about what has already happened. I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it.” - Adriana Trigiani