Wisdom

" For what use is wisdom that does not make wise the man able to hear?

But as the cycle of studies contributes to philosophy, their mistress, so philosophy itself works together toward the acquisition of wisdom.

" The wise in understanding have a certain native property of nature, but they receive a twofold "spirit of perception" from the most authoritative Wisdom, when they have made themselves fit.

nay, it is better simply to use letters for a sound mind, but we, as with everything else, so spill out into the superfluous philosophy itself.

Is wisdom, the greatest of all arts, gathered upon a journey?

You ask whether it is true, what the Stoics hold, that wisdom is a good, but to be wise is not a good.

Antiphon, it is common opinion among us in regard to beauty and wisdom that there is an honourable and a shameful way of bestowing them.

And do you suppose that wisdom is nowhere else to be found, although you know that you have a mere speck of all the earth in your body and a mere drop of all the water, and that of all the other mighty elements you received, I suppose, just a scrap towards the fashioning of your body?

Clearly, then, if you set any value on your society, you would insist on getting the proper price for that too.

Books are the shells of wisdom (ḥikmah).

the concomitants of wisdom are core-intelligence (lubb), penetration of judgement, excellence of mind, quickness of understanding, and their like;

And so it is prescribed by wisdom that the wise man should, if there be need, leave wisdom itself.

But if we should concede this of the arts, yet the case of virtue would not be the same, because virtue needs the most reflection and exercise — which is not so in the arts — and because virtue embraces stability, firmness, constancy of the whole life, and we do not see these same things to be in the arts.

For because wisdom is a consistent action, it is in that pertaining kind which I mentioned;

These considerations therefore show that Wisdom is both Scientific Knowledge and Intuitive Intelligence as regards the things of the most exalted nature.

Hence Wisdom must be a combination of Intelligence and Scientific Knowledge:

It is also clear that Wisdom cannot be the same thing as Political Science;

take the lead in wisdom and virtue.

for the power to speak well is taken as the surest index of a sound understanding, and discourse which is true and lawful and just is the outward image of a good and faithful soul.

And, if there is need to speak in brief summary of this power, we shall find that none of the things which are done with intelligence take place without the help of speech, but that in all our actions as well as in all our thoughts speech is our guide, and is most employed by those who have the most wisdom.

And yet how unreasonable it is to give higher praise to those who cultivate the less than to those who cultivate the greater thing, and that too when everyone knows it was not through excellence of body that Athens ever accomplished any noteworthy thing, but that through wisdom of men she became the most prosperous and the greatest of Hellenic states.

But men who pretend to excellence must not imitate their example but much rather the power of wisdom and of justice and of the other virtues.

For there is no one who, among the ways of life, will not give preference to the practice of reverence in relation to the gods and of justice in relation to mankind and of wisdom in relation to all activities in general, and they will tell you that the Spartans have lived in the Peloponnesus not more than seven hundred years.

Men of intelligence are accustomed to take common counsel with others regarding matters about which they are concerned, preferably with those who are wiser than themselves, but, at any rate, with those who will express their own judgement.

for you give hope to your father and to all the world that if, as you grow older, you hold fast to this course, you will as far surpass your fellow-men in wisdom as your father has surpassed all mankind.

Were the happinesses not many and of various kinds, the happy man in truth would be one man among men, namely the one who had acquired all the parts of philosophy and understood all the arts and whose portion of the whole of wisdom was ample.

But as for the other arts that are useful in these two, they may be called wisdom, and that metaphorically and not in truth;

And if a man confines himself to the four books, that suffices him for the learning of wisdom and the reading of the books after them, which are the books we have enumerated and whose division by the sage we have expounded.

(And secondly) it is not sound for a rational man, let alone a sage, to say that the mere presence of a form in a thing is that thing's knowledge of the form's owner;

and blessing and peace upon our Prophet, the wisest of the world's sages and the seal of the great masters of divine science (*al-ilāhiyyūn*), our lord Muḥammad, and upon his family and his Companions.

a servant in the service of wisdom (*ḥikmah*);

The fact is, men of Athens, that I have acquired this reputation on account of nothing else than a sort of wisdom.

Human wisdom is of little or no value.

My dear Simmias, I suspect that this is not the right way to purchase virtue, by exchanging pleasures for pleasures, and pains for pains, and fear for fear, and greater for less, as if they were coins, but the only right coinage, for which all those things must be exchanged and by means of and with which all these things are to be bought and sold, is in fact wisdom;

and these mystics are, I believe, those who have been true philosophers.

Then it is by virtue of its smallest class and minutest part of itself, and the wisdom that resides therein, in the part which takes the lead and rules, that a city established on principles of nature would be wise as a whole.

Is it then owing to the science of her carpenters that a city is to be called wise and well advised?

But to the things that wisdom has consecrated it can do no harm;

because they named no Matter at all, but first Wisdom founded, the beginning of the ways unto his works;

Or, if he stretched out the heaven thus alone, how do these heretics presume perversely, as though singular Wisdom were not admitted, who says, "When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him"?

And so, in contemplating the man’s wisdom and nobility of character, I find it beyond my power to forget him or, in remembering him, to refrain from praising him.

and moreover, in the meetings of the legislative assembly all the people of Athens, without question, follow the advice of those whose words are wisest rather than that of their own relatives.

Once on a time when Chaerephon made inquiry at the Delphic oracle concerning me, in the presence of many people Apollo answered that no man was more free than I, or more just, or more prudent.

So we see that mere human wisdom does not know how to choose what is best any more than if any one were to cast lots and do as the lot fell.

But whatever it is not possible for man to learn, nor for human wisdom to foresee, that you may find out from the gods by the soothsayer’s art, and thus prove yourself wiser than others;

But how could one become really wise in foreseeing that which will prove to be useful?