Quotes & Sayings About Worldly Wisdom

Do not use worldly methods or apply human force to prevent sin — Sunday Adelaja

A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business — Charlie Munger

Always remember, wherever you are, whether near or far, you had a mother who really, really loved you. The original mother. Once you've found your true inner guru you can never again be divided. Perfect union with the divine, through the grace of your real teacher, transcends time, space, death and all worldly limitations. Your real teacher is the original mother - regardless in which manifest or non-manifest form, or gender, she appears. The one who nurtures you and the one who also, out of wisdom and compassion, corrects you if you are misguided. — Zeena Schreck

I find that to be a fool as to worldly wisdom, and to commit my cause to God, not fearing to offend men, who take offence at the simplicity of truth, is the only way to remain unmoved at the sentiments of others. — John Woolman

If someone wants to give you money, whatever the source, you should take it. Every religious-historical authority agrees about that. — Antal Szerb

Our worldly wisdom has made us calloused and hard. Our natural wisdom, as the Scriptures teach, comes not from God, but is earthly, sensual, and devilish. — Billy Graham

We can only escape from the world by outgrowing the world. Death may take man out of the world but only wisdom can take the world out of the man. As long as the human being is obsessed by worldliness, he will suffer from the Karmic consequences of false allegiances. When however, worldliness is transmuted into Spiritual Integrity he is free, even though he still dwells physically among worldly things. — Manly P. Hall

Nothing is so pleasant ... as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and dissertation, but it is a trifle tedious to hear another person display theirs. — Ouida

Worldly religion is that which replaces Faith with mere wishful thinking. One must not make the common mistake of putting his faith in all the things he thinks God ought to bless him with; he should instead keep his faith planted in God Himself. Present to Him his needs and wants like a child to his Father, but have faith only in His wisdom and goodness like a servant to his King. God must always be one's Everything before He is one's token to everything. — Criss Jami

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally. — John Maynard Keynes

A person of wisdom is not one who practices Buddhism apart from worldly affairs but, rather, one who thoroughly understands the principles by which the world is governed. — Nichiren

There are two kinds of Riya - Showing off-Ostentation ie pure ostentation and adulterated ostention. In pure ostentation "Riya" a man does a good deed only for worldly benefit. In Adulterated ostentation, a man does a good deed with the intention of reaping the benefits of the world as well as of the Hereafter. — Al-Ghazali

By seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his own name, dares not believe in himself, finds being himself too risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd.
Now this form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the world. Precisely by losing oneself in this way, such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yes, for making a great success out of life. Here there is no dragging of the feet, no difficulty with his self and its infinitizing, he is ground smooth as a pebble, as exchangeable as a coin of the realm. Far from anyone thinking him to be in despair, he is just what a human being ought to be. Naturally, the world has generally no understanding of what is truly horrifying. — Soren Kierkegaard

They only trusted the wisdom of people brighter and more worldly than themselves when it was expressed in the vocabulary and style of rural idiots. In his guise as Brazenydol, he had once had a contract with DARPA to teach a team of physicists the basic terminology of tractor pulls so that they could give an acceptable explanation of omniwavelength stealth to a Congressional committee that didn't understand tractor pulls, either. — John Barnes

Worldly Wisdom
Do not stay in the field!
Nor climb out of sight.
The best view of the world
Is from a medium height. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The Christian religion alone has been able to cure these twin vices, not by using one to expel the other according to worldly wisdom, but by expelling both through the simplicity of the Gospel. For it teaches the righteous, whom it exalts, even to participation in divinity itself, that in this sublime state they still bear the source of all corruption, which exposes them throughout their lives to error, misery, death and sin; and it cries out to the most ungodly that they are capable of the grace of their redeemer. Thus, making those whom it justifies tremble and consoling those whom it condemns, it so nicely tempers fear with hope through this dual capacity, common to all men, for grace and sin, that it causes infinitely more dejection than mere reason, but without despair, and infinitely more exaltation than natural pride, but without puffing us up. — Blaise Pascal

Burn worldly love,
rub the ashes and make ink of it,
make the heart the pen,
the intellect the writer,
write that which has no end or limit. — Guru Nanak

The worldly wisdom of the foolish man Is like a sieve, that does alone retain The grosser substance of the worthless bran: But thou, my soul, let thy brave thoughts disdain So coarse a purchase: O be thou a fan To purge the chaff, and keep the winnow'd grain: Make clean thy thoughts, and dress thy mixt desires: Thou art Heav'n's tasker, and thy God requires The purest of thy flow'r, as well as of thy fires. — Francis Quarles

Fear and paranoia create many of our worldly struggles. We get something in our minds and our distorted perception sculpts the reality of what we see. Even though what we see isn't really there, we tend to act as if it is. We then begin to put people and things into boxes, labeling them, and limiting them due to our fears. — Alaric Hutchinson

I have no agenda except to be funny. Neither I or the writers profess to offer any worldly wisdom. — Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Be a man with living principles within; never bow to the varying customs of worldly wisdom. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Allah the Exalted loves him who forgoes worldly life, the Angels love him who rejects the vices, and the Muslims love him who gives up greediness in respect of the Muslims. — Uthman Ibn Affan

Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group then to hell with them. — Charlie Munger

The more one understands the world ... the harder it is to obtain Buddhahood. Dakpo to Shan — Eliot Pattison

How is it that there are not many who are led by sermons to forsake open sin? Do you know what I think? That is because preachers have too much worldly wisdom. — Teresa Of Avila

While you are alive, your worldly self is like a collector of benefits from Allah's bounties, which come to you from myriads of hands. — Ibn Arabi

25For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 26For consider your calling, brothers: m not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, [3] not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27But n God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; o God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28God chose what is low and despised in the world, even p things that are not, to q bring to nothing things that are, 29so r that no human being [4] might boast in the presence of God. 30And because of him [5] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us s wisdom from God, t righteousness and u sanctification and v redemption, 31so that, as it is written, w Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. — Anonymous

Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them. — Charles Caleb Colton

Our religion is one which challenges the ordinary human standards by holding that the ideal of life is the spirit of a little child. We tend to glorify adulthood and wisdom and worldly prudence, but the Gospel reverses all this. The Gospel says that the inescapable condition of entrance into the divine fellowship is that we turn and become as a little child. — D. Elton Trueblood

So there is nothing to be proud of these worldly possessions. What you are to be proud of, or to be conscious of is your spirit. Spirit is the only thing that can kindle another spirit. — Nirmala Srivastava

Absorption in worldly affairs breeds darkness in the heart, and absorption in the affairs of the next world enkindles light in the heart — Uthman Ibn Affan

Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth. — John Buchan

So long as one does not become simple like a child, one does not get divine illumination. Forget all the worldly knowledge that thou hast acquired and become as a child, and then will thou get the divine wisdom. — Ramakrishna

Many people are very intelligent in accomplishing worldly attainments. This intelligence is not wisdom because worldly attainments such as a high position, reputation, wealth and success in business are deceptive. If we die tomorrow they will disappear tomorrow, and nothing will be left for our future. Wisdom, however, will never deceive us. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

Had there not been five bad qualities, all the people would have been righteous. Contentment with ignorance; love for worldly life; miserliness inspite of much wealth; ostentation in (good) deeds; and pride in their own intelligence. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash daily and hourly by chalky pedagogues, I was at large in a wicked seaport of half a million people, with a front seat at every public show, as free of the night as of day, and getting earfuls of instruction in a hundred giddy arcana, none of them taught in schools ... [But] if I neglected the humanities, I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer, or a midwife. — H.L. Mencken

Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style. — Jonathan Raban

Peace is worth more than all worldly possessions; in addition, God rewards it even in this life. — Vincent De Paul

And again, though we cannot prove, we feel, that we are deathless. We perceive that life is not like those dramas so beloved by the people - in which every villain is punished, and every act of virtue meets with its reward; we learn anew every day that the wisdom of the serpent fares better here than the gentleness of the dove, and that any thief can triumph if he steals enough. If mere worldly utility and expediency were the justification of virtue, it would not be wise to be too good. And yet, knowing all this, having it flung into our faces with brutal repetition, we still feel the command to righteousness, we know that we ought to do the inexpedient good. — Will Durant

If he who has little wit needs a master to inform his stupidity, he who has much frequently needs ten to keep in check his worldly wisdom, which might otherwise, like a high-mettled charger, toss him to the ground. — Christian Scriver

His business. On Denman's death he returned to his former trade, and shortly set up a printing house of his own from which he published "The Pennsylvania Gazette," to which he contributed many essays, and which he made a medium for agitating a variety of local reforms. In 1732 he began to issue his famous "Poor Richard's Almanac" for the enrichment of which he borrowed or composed those pithy utterances of worldly wisdom which are the basis of a large part of his popular reputation. — Benjamin Franklin

Very often it has come to my mind what men of learning there were formerly throughout England..and how nowadays...we would have to seek them outside...Thanks be to God Almighty that we now have any supply of teachers at all!...As often as you can, free yourself from worldly affairs so that you may apply that wisdom which God gave you wherever you can. Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves didn't cherish learning nor transmit it to other men. — King Alfred The Great

Divinely wise souls often infuriate the worldly-wise because they always see things from the Divine point of view. The worldly are willing to let anyone believe in God if he pleases, but only on condition that a belief in God will mean no more than belief in anything else. They will allow God, provided that God does not matter. But taking God seriously is precisely what makes the saint. As St. Teresa put it, "What is not God to me is nothing." This passion is called snobbish, intolerant, stupid, and unwarranted intrusion; yet those who resent it deeply wish in their own hearts that they had the saint's inner peace and happiness. — Fulton J. Sheen

Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term. — Soren Kierkegaard

We write our life stories detailing our worldly experiences in order to expose the unconscious mind to the world of conscious appreciation. By extending our consciousness, we bring material insights to our emotional forefront. Words lay the foundation for truth telling. The music of our words allows us to train the lightness of language upon the darkness of our own humanity. The taxonomy of the human mind empowers us to employ the magic of language to share information, suggest action, speculate upon the future, reminisce about pastimes, lance our most ragged feelings, and pontificate, with a drunkard's sense of punchy assuredness, upon any topic that fits our fancy. We tell stories in order to mark our existence, to share both our triumphs and failures, and teach wisdom gained from our previous skirmishes in a convoluted world. In absence of our stories, we do not exist in our own minds or in the minds of our people. — Kilroy J. Oldster

It's hurtful somehow to admit this thing and anyway that doesn't mean i'm losing my faith in this beautiful world. But these days now is the time where people have become so much more-excuse me-shallow. When all of the fancy things and outer beauty are demanded, and those who are lost enough to chase and manage to get those things, they will happen to get very nice response from social and able to expand their images and get famous and be seen as someone who has value. Meanwhile those who could see deeper and their souls are insecure of this mad world, they will have smaller space in width but they will dig deeper and deeper into their self, making space in height, finding the true meaning of their souls, the true essential unshakable truth that's beyond the fragile material worldly things. — Reza Rusandi

Whoever desires Paradise, proceeds towards goodness; whoever fears Hell, refrains from the impulses of passions; whoever believes firmly in death, detests wordly life; and whoever recognises the worldly life, the trials and tribulations (of life) become slight for him. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

It is sometimes asserted that a surgical operation is or should be a work of art ... fit to rank with those of the painter or sculptor ... That proposition does not admit of discussion. It is a product of the intellectual innocence which I think we surgeons may fairly claim to possess, and which is happily not inconsistent with a quite adequate worldly wisdom. — Wilfred Trotter

This, and this alone, is Christianity, a universal holiness in every part of life, a heavenly wisdom in all our actions, not conforming to the spirit and temper of the world but turning all worldly enjoyments into means of piety and devotion to God. — William Law

He had found riches beyond worldly imagination. He had found the never ending well of love. — Soroosh Shahrivar

Knowledge is power, as some say. But on some days it is just as much pain and confusion as it is power; and any wise man worth his salt as a wise man at least understands this. One may be able to comprehend all the human perspectives in the universe, but this gives more to decipher regarding what is actually true; and even after discovering the truth, the challenge is in maintaining a patience for the infinite number of opinions that do not reflect that truth. Its consistency in man is challenge. A worldly knowledge ends at the former challenge of confusion, but the knowledge of Christ ends at the latter challenge of patience. — Criss Jami

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man. — Henry David Thoreau

Let each of us accept the truth of the following statement and try to make it our most fundamental principle: Christ's teaching will never let us down, while worldly wisdom always will. Christ Himself said that this sort of wisdom was like a house with nothing but sand as its foundation, while His own was like a building with solid rock as its foundation. — Vincent De Paul

It is wisdom, worldly wisdom, to administer even health to oneself for a long time in small doses. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The popular contemporary wisdom that a liberal arts education is outmoded is true only to the extent that social equality, liberty, and worldly development of mind and character are outmoded and have been displaced by another set of metrics: income streams, profitability, technological innovation. — Wendy Brown

In phrases as brief as a breath worldly wisdom concentrates. — Willis Regier

Success is not rightly measured by the worldly standards of wealth, prestige and power. None of these bestow happiness unless they are rightly used. To use them rightly one must possess wisdom and love for God and man. — Paramahansa Yogananda

The moment you are wrapped up in the world, you become blind to the things wrapped in the mysteries. — Michael Bassey Johnson

You should have only one intense desire within yourself: Have I become the spirit? Have I achieved my ultimate? Have I risen above the worldly desires? — Nirmala Srivastava

If you can read, there is no worldly wisdom that cannot be gathered from the pages of a book. — Marion Zimmer Bradley