Sunday, September 20, 2009

Wisdom- christiansquoting.org.uk

Wise men are not always silent, but they know when to be.

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.

It is better to weep with wise men than to laugh with fools. Spanish Proverb

Three things it is best to avoid: a strange dog, a flood, and a man who thinks he is wise.... Welsh Proverb

Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.- Abigail Adams (1744-1818) Letter to her son, John Q. Adams, 1780.

We are ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God. -- . Augustine

Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves ...Opening words of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.--Sandra Carey (1941- )

Should it be said that the Greeks discovered philosophy by human wisdom, I reply that I find the Scriptures declare all wisdom to be a divine gift.
Clement of Rome

A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)_The Ancient Mariner_

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
William Cowper

Wisdom itself is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion.
John Kenneth Galbraith , The Great Crash 1929

The road to wisdom?
Well it's plain and simple to express:
Err and err and err again
but less and less and less.
Piet Hein

It is the province of knowledge to speak And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, 1841 - 1935

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are --C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom. The music is nothing if the audience is deaf. --Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) _A Preface to Morals_

The wisdom of the Greeks, when compared to that of the Jews, is absolutely bestial; for apart from God there can be no wisdom, not any understanding and insight. Martin Luther

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next. - John Stuart Mill

Faith keeps the soul at a holy distance from these infinite depths of divine wisdom, where it profits more by reverence and holy fear than any can do by their utmost attempt to draw nigh to that inaccessible light wherein these glories of the divine nature do dwell. ... John Owen (1616-1683)

Not until we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God's holiness and sovereignty...acknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts, and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours. - James I Packer

". . . the heart of God's wisdom is God's passion to display the glory of his grace in Christ for the everlasting enjoyment of those who believe. Since we are all undeserving sinners, the cross is central to this wisdom. - John Piper,_The Pleasures of God_.

. . . the nature of God's wisdom governs the way it is revealed and known, namely, in a way that will subdue our boasting in ourselves and sustain our boasting in the Lord.- John Piper,_The Pleasures of God_.

Since God's wisdom aims to exalt the glory of god's grace in Christ crucified, God reveals this wisdom in a way that nullifies human pride and boasting. - John Piper,_The Pleasures of God_.

Therefore we may conclude that the ultimate difference between divine wisdom and human wisdom is this: God's wisdom has the supremacy of God's glory as the beginning, middle, and end of it, but man's wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self-determining and not utterly dependent on God's free grace. Divine wisdom begins consciously with God.- John Piper,_The Pleasures of God_.

When divine wisdom is revealed to humans, its effect is to humble us and give us the same God-orientation that God himself has.- John Piper,_The Pleasures of God_.

That man is wise to some purpose who gains his wisdom at the expense and from the experience of another.-- Plautus

No man is wise enough by himself.... Plautus

Judge: I am no wiser now than when you began summing up.
F E Smith: Possibly not My Lord; but better informed. - F. E. Smith (1872 &endash; 1930)

Do you think yourself wise? Then there's a donkey inside your waistcoat. - Spurgeon's Proverbs

Wisdom is the daughter of experience. -- Leonardo da Vinci

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