A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

The line asserts that moral feeling—specifically love and compassion—is a surer guide to right judgment than cleverness, learning, or worldly calculation. “Wisdom” here is not mere knowledge but an ethical discernment: the ability to see others as fully human and to act with generosity. Read in a broadly Dickensian key, it aligns with his recurring contrast between cold, self-interested rationality (often associated with institutions, bureaucracy, or miserliness) and the redemptive power of sympathy, family affection, and fellow-feeling. The statement elevates emotional intelligence and humane conduct as the highest form of understanding, implying that the heart can perceive truths the intellect alone may miss.