Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn
“Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.”
William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Context: Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
“The credit we get for wisdom is measured by our success.”
Source: Hippolytus (428 BC), l. 701, translated by Edward P. Coleridge
“Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
“In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.”
Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman
Colin Wilson book The Occult: A History
Source: The Occult: A History (1971), p. 280
Context: The real importance of Swedenborg lies in the doctrines he taught, which are the reverse of the gloom and hell-fire of other breakaway sects. He rejects the notion that Jesus died on the cross to atone for the sin of Adam, declaring that God is neither vindictive nor petty-minded, and that since he is God, he doesn't need atonement. It is remarkable that this common-sense view had never struck earlier theologians. God is Divine Goodness, and Jesus is Divine Wisdom, and Goodness has to be approached through Wisdom. Whatever one thinks about the extraordinary claims of its founder, it must be acknowledged that there is something very beautiful and healthy about the Swedenborgian religion. Its founder may have not been a great occultist, but he was a great man.
“Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.”
Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright
“Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”
Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron
Rex v. Rusby (1800), Peake's N. P. Cases, 193.
