Echoes

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Those who are slaves to their appetites cannot preserve their reason, their memory, or their senses in their full vigour; for a full belly does not produce a fine mind.

He whose intellect overcomes his desire is higher than the angels; he whose desire overcomes his intellect is less than an animal.

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

Nor less I deem that there are Powers / Which of themselves our minds impress; / That we can feed this mind of ours / In a wise passiveness.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

The five colors blind the eye. The five tones deafen the ear. The five flavors dull the taste. Racing and hunting madden the mind. Precious things lead one astray. Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees. He lets go of that and chooses this.

It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Every Israelite has a duty to study whether he is poor or rich, whether healthy or suffering, whether young or very old and in failing strength, even if he is poor and supported by charity or begs from door to door.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; neither do we rejoice therein, because we control our lusts, but, contrariwise, because we rejoice therein, we are able to control our lusts.

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves—without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster. We cannot begin with an entirely clean slate, since we arrive at this problem with predispositions of hereditary and environmental origin; but, after understanding such built-in biases, is it not possible to pry insights from nature?

The unexamined life is not worth living.

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

Abstinence is the nurse of the soul.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more — more unseen forms become manifest to him.