Quotes about Wisdom

Don't trust anyone over thirty," the 1960s radicals cried. "Don't trust anyone under three hundred," came Thomas Oden's wise reply.

Don't trust anyone over thirty," the 1960s radicals cried. "Don't trust anyone under three hundred," came Thomas Oden's wise reply. "Vox temporis" (the voice of the times) is no more trustworthy than "vox populi" (the voice of the people) when set against "vox dei" (the voice of God).

Many lives have a mystical sense, but not everyone reads it aright. More often than not it is given to us in cryptic form, and when we fail to decipher it, we despair because our lives seem meaningless. The secret of a great life is often a man's success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouchsafed to him, understanding them and so learning to walk in the true path.

With the deepest things in life, there is always more to knowing than knowing will ever know, so the deepest knowledge must be learned in life, from experience, and under a master.

The way of the disciple is a different and deeper way of learning.

Mastering our emotions has nothing to do with asceticism or repression, for the purpose is not to break the emotions or deny them but to "break in" the emotions, making them teachable because they are tamed.

Modern life assaults us with an infinite range of things we could do, we would love to do, or some people tell us we should do. But we are not God and we are neither infinite nor eternal. We are quite simply finite. We have only so many years, so much energy, so many gray cells, and so many bank notes in our wallets. 'Life is too short to...' eventually shortens to 'life is too short.

To come to faith on the basis of experience alone is unwise, though not so foolish as to reject faith altogether because of lack of experience ... the quality of a Christian's experience depends on the quality of his faith, just as the quality of his faith depends in turn on the quality of his understanding of God's truth.

Culturally, one of the best arguments we can make is, wait and see.

I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance.

To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well worth remembering from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.