quotations about experience
Experience is the only prophesy of wise men.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
speech at Mâcon, 1847
God sends experience to paint men's portraits.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A baby has brains, but it doesn't know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.
L. FRANK BAUM
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The embodied soul has two purposes to fulfill: Experience the world, and get liberation from all experiences.
BABA HARI DAS
The Path to Enlightenment Is Not a Highway
We draw to ourselves the experiences which we are ready for and which we demand, and most souls do not demand enough.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
Present experience has, I am afraid, always found us "absent-minded": we cannot give our hearts to it--not even our ears! Rather, as one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself into whose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve beats of noon suddenly starts up and asks himself: "what really was that which just struck?" so we sometimes rub our ears afterward and as, utterly surprised and disconcerted, "what really was that which we have just experienced?"
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
preface, Genealogy of Morals
We learn of great things by little experiences.
BRAM STOKER
"The Jewel of the Seven Stars"
The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of human faculties.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1825
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The Professor at the Breakfast Table
Her hopes ne'er drew
Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose
Sad proof reduces all things from their hues.
LORD BYRON
The Island
Experience is another word for mistakes.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Experience is the most eloquent of preachers, but she never has a large congregation.
BERZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
I'm not giving up on implausible dreams
Experience to extremes
RUSH
"The Enemy Within", Grace Under Pressure
We ought not to look back, unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear bought experience. To enveigh against things that are past and irremediable, is unpleasing; but to steer clear of the shelves and rocks we have struck upon, is the part of wisdom, equally as incumbent on political as other men, who have their own little bark, or that of others, to navigate through the intricate paths of life, or the trackless ocean, to the haven of security and rest.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Major-General Armstrong, Mar. 26, 1781
Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.
HENRY JAMES
The Art of Fiction
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Texts & Pretexts
Experience is retrospect knowledge.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn men from books.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Vivian Grey