Wisdom is probably the ...

Wisdom is probably the ability to cope. That\'s why someone who has to walk seven miles every day to get water for their children can be wiser than someone sitting behind a desk in Wall Street.
Wisdom is probably the ability to cope. That's why someone who has to walk seven miles every day to get water for their children can be wiser than someone sitting behind a desk in Wall Street.
 Stephen Fry

More phrases

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Quotes from the same author

All we have to do is listen. The Good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth, my dear white-headed mother used to say.
 Stephen Fry
You think I have more than most people dream of? What other people dream of doesn't matter. I always had less than I ever dreamt of. All I ever dreamt of was family. A father and a mother. Most people don't even need to dream of such luxuries, they take them for granted. That is what I used to dwell on, alone in my bedroom. I dwelt as all children do, on the injustice. Injustice is the most terrible thing in the world, Oliver. Everything that is evil springs from it and only a cheap soul can abide it without anger.
 Stephen Fry
My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.
 Stephen Fry
I am gay. I am a Jew. My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler's anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian 'correctively' raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself.
 Stephen Fry
Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?
 Stephen Fry