Ethical Wisdom Quotes

Wisdom is the right application of knowledge; and true education...is the application of knowledge to the development of a noble and Godlike character.

In what light soever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.

Every man whose character traits all lie in the mean is called a wise man.

To give oneself ernestly to securing righteousness and justice among the people, and while respecting the gods and demons, to keep aloof from them, that may be called wisdom.

The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it disposes and eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.

Call no man happy before he dies.

We can be wise from goodness and good from wisdom.

Being in humaneness is good. If we select other goodness and thus are far apart from humaneness, how can we be the wise?

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge.

Assuming, as you grow older, that you're the guardian of the world's wisdom, even if you haven't necessarily lived enough to know what's right and wrong.

Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than prudent and just.

Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.

He who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink.

Justice without wisdom is impossible.

Of all parts of wisdom, the practice is the best. Socrates was esteemed the wisest man of his time because he turned his acquired knowledge into morality, and aimed at goodness more than greatness.

I'll never forget what a Catholic priest told me; he said, "If you try to padlock the door, you have to give people an alternative path - an alternative, safer path. You can't padlock, and you shouldn't padlock a burning building."

He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world.

God grant that as our horizon of duty is widened, our minds may widen with it; that as our burden is increased, our shoulders may be strengthened to bear it. God grant to us that spirit of wisdom and understanding, uprightness, and godly fear, without which, even in greatest things there is nothing; with which, even in the smallest things there is every thing.

Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.

Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine.

In the truly great, virtue governs with the sceptre of knowledge.

Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.

The ideal condition would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct; but since we are all likely to go astray, The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach