Saint Augustine Quotes

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.

So let me end with the wish that you find the same kind of happyiness, and laughter, and love, that I have found, and that you have the wisdon to make them last.

If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom.

Happiness itself is sufficient excuse. Beautiful things are right and true; so beautiful actions are those pleasing to the gods. Wise men have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. The answer to the last appeal of what is right lies within a man's own breast. Trust thyself.

Keep well; that is the half of wisdom and of happiness.

If we do not find happiness in the present moment, in what shall we find it?

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. . . . God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

Follow then the shining ones, the wise, the awakened, the loving, for they know how to work and forbear.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it from me. I wish to spread it and bestow it, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.

Since we are already Buddhas, happy and suffering Buddhas, wise and confused Buddhas, we are already Buddha.

Good to be merie and wise.

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.

Wisdom that don't make us happier ain't worth plowing for.

Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.

The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

Moderately wise each one should be, Not overwise, for a wise man's heart Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom)

No one can lead a happy life, or even one that is bearable, without the pursuit of wisdom, and that the perfection of wisdom is what makes the happy life, although even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. Yet this conviction, clear as it is, needs to be strengthened and given deeper roots through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not a important as keeping the resolutions you have made already.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom consisteth not in knowing many things, nor even in knowing them thoroughly; but in choosing and in following what conduces the most certainly to our lasting happiness and true glory.

Since all of us desire to be happy, and since we evidently become so on account of our use—that is our good use—of other things, and since knowledge is what provides this goodness of use and also good fortune, every man must, as seems plausible, prepare himself by every means for this: to be as wise as possible. Right?

To live is to dream, and to dream pleasantly is to be wise.

There is oftentimes a great deal of knowledge where there is but little wisdom to improve that knowledge. It is not the most knowing Christian but the most wise Christian that sees, avoids, and escapes Satan's snares. Knowledge without wisdom is like mettle in a blind horse, which is often an occasion of the rider's fall.