The Silent Mage

Sometimes the simplest, most unassuming quotes have the truest and most latest affect. Or at the very least stick with you. Here is one of the most wise, and a personal favorites (taken from Ursula K. Le Guin's justly famed Earthsea Cycle):  

“To hear, one must be silent.” – Ogion the Silent of Gont, Wizard of Re Albi

Not much is shown of him in the series, but this at least in clear to me. Ogion is and remains one of the wisest Wizards in Fantasy, if for no other reason than his respect for the Balance and that he has clearly heard much that we are deft too.

"When it rained Ogion would not even say the spell that every weather-worker knows, to send the storm aside. In a land where sorcerers come thick, like Gont or the Enlades, you may see a raincloud blundering slowly from side to side and place to place as one spell shunts it on to the next, till at last it is buffeted out over the sea where it can rain in peace. But Ogion let the rain fall where it would." – The Wizard of Earthsea