Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

Russell contrasts two levels of understanding: accepting that time may be objectively real, while also cultivating an attitude in which time’s pressures—urgency, anxiety about the future, regret about the past—lose their dominion over the mind. “Both in thought and in feeling” suggests that wisdom is not merely an intellectual conclusion but an emotional discipline: a trained capacity to see one’s life against a wider horizon than deadlines and personal chronology. The “gate of wisdom” is thus a shift of perspective, akin to philosophical detachment, where what matters is not the quantity of time but the quality and scale of one’s concerns.