Beginning Of Wisdom Quotes & Sayings

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.
Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.
Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom. — Lao-Tzu

From the beginning, from the age of Adam to the time of kingship: from the powerful, pardon: from the poor, sins. — Idries Shah

The higher Christian churches--where, if anywhere, I belong--come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect in any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom. — Annie Dillard

The beginning of political wisdom is the realization that despite everything you've always been taught, the government is not really on your side; indeed, it is out to get you. — Robert Higgs

For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy. — Plato

Legal business has, from the beginning of time, been profitable - to those who have conducted it; because it is concerned with things that touch men's passions very deeply, and because men are willing to pay, and pay highly, for wisdom and skill in the conduct of it. The real merits of the Norman lawyers were, not altruism, but ability, energy, and enthusiasm for their work. — Edward Jenks

Now you are beginning to think for yourself instead of letting others think for you. That's the beginning of wisdom. — Margaret Mitchell

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom. — M. Scott Peck

When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die. — Victor Hugo

Our stride for success is the beginning of wisdom". — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. — Mortimer J. Adler

The beginning of all wisdom is to understand that you don't know. To know is the enemy of all learning. To be sure is the enemy of wisdom. — Victor Villasenor

To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom. — Socrates

The study of History is the beginning of wisdom. — Jean Bodin

Fear of the Lord is not the beginning of wisdom. It is the beginning of insanity. — C.J. Anderson

One day I realized something obvious: In all these movies, there was a similar plot. The hero is always weak at the beginning and strong at the end, or a jerk at the beginning and kind at the end, or cowardly at the beginning and brave at the end. In other words, heroes are almost always screwups. But it hardly mattered. All the hero has to do to make the story great is struggle with doubt, face their demons, and muster enough strength to destroy the Death Star. That said, I noticed another thing. The strongest character in a story isn't the hero, it's the guide. Yoda. Haymitch. It's the guide who gets the hero back on track. The guide gives the hero a plan and enough confidence to enter the fight. The guide has walked the path of the hero and has the advice and wisdom to get the hero through their troubles so they can beat the resistance. The more I studied story, the more I realized I needed a guide. — Donald Miller

World is a divine play. At the beginning and at the end, we are the same. — Amit Ray

Proverbs 9:10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. — Bible KJV

The definition of terms is the beginning of wisdom. — Socrates

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

When the angel spoke, God awoke in the heart of this girl of Nazareth and moved within her like a giant. He stirred and opened His eyes and her soul and saw that in containing Him she contained the world besides. The Annunciation was not so much a vision as an earthquake in which God moved the universe and unsettled the spheres, and the beginning and end of all things came before her in her deepest heart. And far beneath the movement of this silent cataclysm she slept in the infinite tranquility of God, and God was a child curled up who slept in her and her veins were flooded with His wisdom which is night, which is starlight, which is silence. And her whole being was embraced in Him whom she embraced and they became tremendous silence." -Thomas Merton — Thomas Merton

You see how people get through their misfortunes, if they have but a heart to bear up against them, and do nothing that can lie on their conscience afterwards; and how suddenly one comes to be happy, just when one is beginning to think one never is to be happy again! ... who would have thought we should ever know what it is to be happy! Yet here we are all abroad once more! All at liberty! And may run, if we will, straight forward, from one end of the earth to the other, and back again without being stopped! May fly in the sea, or swim in the sky, or tumble over head and heels into the moon! For remember, my good friends, we have no lead in our consciences to keep us down! — Ann Radcliffe

Time is an ocean
without any bottom.
We are getting lost
while searching for an atom.
Time is a river
without any beginning or end,
one way flow of life,
without any stop or bend.
Time is rocking and moving
Like a rocking chair.
Life is beginning and ending
but going no where. — Debasish Mridha

I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were always heroes
epic on epic, Iliad on Iliad, and you always brothers in arms. Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the beginning of the world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness, where there is not any created thing, and to you I was only a voice commanding valour and an unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the daylight I denied it myself ... But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. — G.K. Chesterton

Thirty-nine years of my life had passed before I understood that clouds were not my enemy; that they were beautiful, and that I needed them. I suppose this, for me, marked the beginning of wisdom. Life is short. — Iimani David

You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds.
When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. — Alice Walker

The beginning of wisdom, I believe, is our ability to accept an inherent messiness in our explanation of what's going on. Nowhere is it written that human minds should be able to give a full accounting of creation in all dimensions and on all levels. Ludwig Wittgenstein had the idea that philosophy should be what he called "true enough." I think that's a great idea. True enough is as true as can be gotten. The imagination is chaos. New forms are fetched out of it. The creative act is to let down the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended and then to attempt to bring out of it ideas. — Rupert Sheldrake

Death is not the end of life, it is the beginning of an eternal journey. — Debasish Mridha

No matter how fleeting
Your smile is,
Your smile is the very beginning
Of your wisdom-light. — Sri Chinmoy

KINDNESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WISDOM; RECOGNITION OF THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM. I have never found this to be the case. I've gotten this far being wise without being kind, and my feeling is: If it ain't broke don't fix it. — Joe Queenan

The beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become transparent. — Thomas Carlyle

By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom. — Terry Pratchett

If one does not get it into his head from the very beginning that the world is full of unseemly situations, for the most part his demeanour will be poor and he will not be believed by others. — Tsunetomo Yamamoto

Diwali means to be in the present, so drop the regrets of the past and the worries of the future and live in the moment. It is a time to forget the bickering and negativities that have happened through the year. It is a time when you throw light on the wisdom you have gained and welcome a new beginning. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Perhaps you are beginning to see how essential a part of reading it is to be perplexed and know it. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess. — Mortimer J. Adler

The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen. — Ray Bradbury

True: fear is the beginning of wisdom, but love perfects it! — Stefan Emunds

Suspicion is the beginning of wisdom, and of madness. — Mason Cooley

The fact was, as a story - even leaving out the supernatural, especially leaving out the supernatural, taking it all as metaphor, I mean - the Bible made perfect sense to me from the very beginning. I saw a God whose nature was creative love. He made man in his own image for the purpose of forming new and free relationships with him. But in his freedom, man turned away from that relationship to consult his own wisdom and desires. The knowledge of good and evil was not some top-secret catalogue of nice and naughty acts that popped into Eve's mind when a talking snake got her to eat the magic fruit. The knowledge was built into the action of disobedience itself: it's what she learned when she overruled the moral law God had placed within her. There was no going back from that. The original sin poisoned all history. History's murders, rapes, wars, oppressions, and injustices are now the inescapable plot of the story we're in. The — Andrew Klavan

I am the creation of love.
I am the source of love.
I am the beginning of love.
I like to vanish in love. — Debasish Mridha

In the midst of life's ups and down, beginnings and endings, let us live our life, let us be joyful, let us be happy. — Debasish Mridha

Imprint deep upon your minds the principles of piety towards God, and a reverence and fear of His holy name. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and its consummation is everlasting felicity. Possess yourselves of just and elevated notions of the Divine character, attributes, and administration, and of the end and dignity of your own immortal nature as it stands related to Him. — William Samuel Johnson

There is a fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, which is founded in love. There is also a slavish fear, which is a mere dread of evil, and is purely selfish. — Charles Grandison Finney

Today is the most important day to start a new beginning. It will open the door of opportunity and reveal the holding. — Debasish Mridha

Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government. But from the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. — Mitt Romney

PROV 1.7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. — Anonymous

Am I filled to overflowing with love for Jesus Christ as I was in the beginning, when I went out of my way to prove my devotion to Him? Does He ever find me pondering the time when I cared only for Him? Is that where I am now, or have I chosen man's wisdom over true love for Him? Am I so in love with Him that I take no thought for where He might lead me? Or am I watching to see how much respect I get as I measure how much service I should give Him? — Oswald Chambers

I have a burden on my soul. During my long life, I did not make anyone happy, neither my friends, nor my family, nor even myself. I have done many evil things ... I was the cause of the beginning of three big wars. About 800,000 people were killed because of me on the battlefields., and their mothers, brothers, and widows cried for them. And now this stands between me and God. — Otto Von Bismarck

You will know love when the mind is very still and free from its search for gratification and escapes. First, the mind must come entirely to an end. Mind is the result of thought, and thought is merely a passage, a means to an end. When life is merely a passage to something, how can there be love ? Love comes into being when the mind is naturally quiet, not made quiet, when it sees the false as false and the true as true. When the mind is quiet, then whatever happens is the action of love, it is not the action of knowledge. Knowledge is mere experience, and experience is not love. Experience cannot know love. Love comes into being when we understand the total process of ourselves, and the understanding of ourselves is the beginning of wisdom. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Nature ... has made it impossible for us to have any communication from this earth with the other great bodies of the universe, in our present state; and it is highly possible that he has likewise cut off all communication betwixt the other planets, and betwixt the different systems. ... We observe, in all of them, enough to raise our curiosity, but not to satisfy it ... It does not appear to be suitable to the wisdom that shines throughout all nature, to suppose that we should see so far, and have our curiosity so much raised ... only to be disappointed at the end ... This, therefore, naturally leads us to consider our present state as only the dawn or beginning of our existence, and as a state of preparation or probation for farther advancement. ... — Colin Maclaurin

The foundational Vajrakilaya is the sun shining in the sky behind the clouds. The path Vajrakilaya is the removal of the clouds from the sky through the force of wind and rain, or whatever; it is the path of method and wisdom, combined. And the resultant Vajrakilaya is the nature of your mind, the nature of your rigpa, which is the same mind as the mind of the primordial buddha, Kuntuzangpo. The path Vajrakilaya is the removal of the adventitious veil of obscuration that covers rigpa. Applying the method by practicing generation stage (kyerim) and completion stage (dzogrim), accumulating merit and purifying negative karma, removing that veil, is the path. The result is realizing that ones own self nature is buddha. So the result is the same as the foundation. In the beginning you are buddha, and in the end you are buddha. — Gyatrul Rinpoche

Some people say falling in love is the beginning of life, but some people says it is the end of theirs. — Debasish Mridha

All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood. — Zora Neale Hurston

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. — Socrates

And I think it was a great Frenchman, Voltaire, who said that the beginning of wisdom is the moment when one understands how little concerned with one's own life are other men, they who are so desperately preoccupied with their own. I knew nothing about you and that boy, nothing at all. — William Styron

When fear overwhelms truth and love, we call it pain. Our spirit as women has all the knowledge and power we need to give birth and to nurture our babies. It is in our genetic coding. It has been there since the beginning of time. You can trust its wisdom. — Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa

The love of fear and death is the beginning of wisdom. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Desire I think has less to do with possession than with participation, the will to involve oneself in the body of the world, in the principle of things expressing itself in splendid specificity, a handful of images: a lover's irreplaceable body, the roil and shimmer of the sea overshot with sunlight, a handful of cherries, the texture and weight of a word. The word that seems most apt is partake ... We can say we partake of something but we may just as accurately say we take part in something' we are implicated in another being, which is always the beginning of wisdom, isn't it- that involvement which enlarges us, which engages the heart, which takes out of the routine limitations of self? — Mark Doty

My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom. — William Tecumseh Sherman

Must we learn such costly lessons over and over again? Times change, but truth persists. When we fail to profit from the experiences of the past, we are doomed to repeat them with all their heartache, suffering, and anguish. Haven't we the wisdom to obey Him who knows the beginning from the end - our Lord, who designed the plan of salvation - rather than that serpent, who despised its beauty? — Thomas S. Monson

The essence of death is discovered in the gap between one moment ceasing and another one beginning. That essence is the wakefulness that is our true nature. — Enza Vita

He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder. — Tad Williams

The knowledge of God is beginning of wisdom. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. — Bertrand Russell

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The beginning of all wisdom is recognition of facts. — Juho Kusti Paasikivi

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

In the beginning, Adam was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow - not Eve. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's place is in the home! — Ezra Taft Benson

Wisdom, Happiness, and Courage are not waiting somewhere out beyond sight at the end of a straight line; they're part of a continuous cycle that begins right here. They're not only the ending, but the beginning as well. — Benjamin Hoff

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. — Aristotle.

Surprise is the beginning of wisdom. — David Gelernter

The mystery and art of living are as grand as the sweep of a lifetime and the lifetime of a species. And they are as close as beginning, quietly, to mine whatever grace and beauty, whatever healing and attentiveness, are possible in this moment and the next and the next one after that. — Krista Tippett

I have given up the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more- simply a human ... We are not true humans, but beings who live by a civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us. No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I am not happy-yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I live, I don't care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom. — Albert Schweitzer

Religion is trust, and that trust arose in the beginning from the impressions made on the mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom of nature, and more particularly, by those regularly recurring events, the return of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of the seasons, the law of cause and effect, gradually discovered in all things, and traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by whatever name we choose to call it. — Friedrich Max Muller

if you are to begin at the beginning of the end, do not wait till the end before you begin. Time and timing is an essential accoutrement in the journey of life. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom. — Socrates

Death is the beginning of a new life, not the end of the life.
You may leave this world but not our heart, you will live there for ever. — Debasish Mridha

Doubt is the beginning of wisdom — Aristotle.

The practice of the Sufis is too sublime to have a formal beginning, — Idries Shah

You go on, I presume, with your latin Exercises: and I wish to hear of your beginning upon Sallust who is one of the most polished and perfect of the Roman Historians, every Period of whom, and I had almost said every Syllable and every Letter is worth Studying.
In Company with Sallust, Cicero, Tacitus and Livy, you will learn Wisdom and Virtue. You will see them represented, with all the Charms which Language and Imagination can exhibit, and Vice and Folly painted in all their Deformity and Horror.
You will ever remember that all the End of study is to make you a good Man and a useful Citizen. - This will ever be the Sum total of the Advice of your affectionate Father,
John Adams — John Adams

The Fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom, and therefore belongs to the beginnings, and is felt in the first cold hours before the dawn of civilisation; the power that comes out of the wilderness and rides on the whirlwind and breaks the gods of stone; the power before which the eastern nations are prostrate like a pavement; the power before which the primitive prophets run naked and shouting, at once proclaiming and escaping from their god; the fear that is rightly rooted in the beginnings of every religion, true or false: the fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom; but not the end. — G.K. Chesterton

Curiosity is the beginning of wisdom. — Francoise Sagan

Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. — Socrates

The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You can't trust God to be unmerciful.
There you have the beginning of all wisdom. — Robert Frost

The main secret of his progress, the secret of all wisdom, was, that with him action was the beginning and end of thought. — George MacDonald

Self-discipline is the beginning of wisdom, not its end. When we have discovered the purpose for which self-discipline exists, we will, if we are sane, hardly recall anything about self-discipline because it has enabled us to become free to see and do so much else. — James V. Schall

The beginning of wisdom is the knowledge of folly. — Norm MacDonald

End of a matter is better than its beginning — Anonymous

Wisdom is the principal thing. The principle to discover the principal thing is "the fear of the Lord". Fear God and be wise. — Israelmore Ayivor

The beginning of knowledge is the intention, then listening, then understanding, then action, then preservation, and then spreading it. — Abdullah Ibn Mubarak

Change is like a river: nothing is the same, even for an instant. Everything is continually moving through the six stages of change: about to come into being, beginning, expanding, approaching maximum potential, peaking, and finally, passing its peak and flowing into its new condition. — Wu Wei

When you get a principle on which everyone is agreed, you get the beginning of complacency and deterioration. — Idries Shah

It's the beginning of wisdom when you admit you've gone astray. — John Brunner

Each of us has ... all the time there is. Those years, weeks, hours, are the sands in the glass running swiftly away. To let them drift through our fingers is tragic waste. To use them to the hilt, making them count for something, is the beginning of wisdom. — Eleanor Roosevelt

To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age. Youth is wholly experimental. The essence and charm of that unquiet and delightful epoch is ignorance of self as well as ignorance of life. — Robert Louis Stevenson

No power of earth, or hell, men or devils, can possibly stand against the word of God; and hence it is the very height of folly and wild madness for any one to set up his thoughts or reasonings in opposition to the plain statements of Holy Scripture; and, on the other hand, it is the beginning and end of all true wisdom to submit in all things to the absolute authority of that Word which is settled forever in Heaven. — Charles Henry Mackintosh

Gratitude is the beginning of wisdom. Stated differently, true wisdom cannot be obtained unless it is built on a foundation of true humility and gratitude. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Perplexity is the beginning of a new way. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

It is no easy task to do away with a thing that is established. We, therefore, say that the non-beginning of a thing is supreme wisdom. — Mahatma Gandhi