Quotes About Experience

When a beginner wins he feels brilliant and invincible Then he takes wild risk and loses everything.

A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.

Well, that's the important thing, isn't it, Mma? To feel happiness, and then to remember it.

We act out our lives to a soundtrack, thought Isabel, the music that becomes, for a spell, out favourite and is listened to again and again until it stands for the time itself. But that was about all the scripting that we achieved; the rest, for most of us, was extemporising.

The ordinary you, the you that has to go to work every morning, the you that has to run a household, pay bills, do all of those things--that you is somehow changed into an exciting, artistic, fully alive you. That's what Paris does.

Mr. J.L.B Matekoni, she asked, do you think that our souls grow as we get older? He did not answer immediately, but when he did, she thought his answer quite perfect. Yes, he said. Our souls get wider. They grow like the branches of a tree--growing outwards. And more birds come and make their homes in these branches. And sing a bit more. He stopped and looked a little awkward. I'm talking nonsense, Mma. You're not, she said.

We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television - gray, lined, thoughtful.

Life happens, she thought; whatever we do, life just happens.

We've all had that sort of experience," said Mma Ramotswe. "Every one of us, Mma. We've all had a first day at school, or a first day in a new job. We've all been unsure what to do.

In her experience, the places one set off for were usually still there no matter when one arrived; it would be different, naturally enough, if towns, villages, houses moved—then one might have a real reason to hurry—but they did not.

And the difference was this, she mused: those who are twenty don't know what it is like to be forty, whereas those who are forty know what it is like to be twenty. It was a bit like discussing a foreign country with somebody who has never been there. They are prepared to listen, but it's not quite real for them.

Yes, wisdom: that was something that came to everybody, although it came in varying quantities and at different times.

You do not have to read a book to understand how the world works. You just have to keep your eyes open.

She watched him take the trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it to his lips and then, so suddenly, from that tiny cup of metal against his flesh, the sound would burst out like a glorious, brilliant knife dividing the air. And the little room would reverberate and the flies, jolted out of their torpor, would buzz round and round as if riding the swirling notes.

Metaphors were so bloody: people shot messengers,, flogged dead horses, cut the throats of their competitors. Perhaps that was life; perhaps that's what it was really like.

There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.

She had barely talked to Jamie about his school days, and she wondered whether this was another area of experience that was for some reason out of bounds. Had he been happy? Who had his school friends been? She had no idea. There must be a reason why he had decided not to attend his ten-year class reunion; normally Jamie's instincts were social. If invited to a party, he went, and usually enjoyed himself; perhaps this did not apply to reunions.

of day it was or how we were feeling, they were

This tea is for people who really appreciate tea. Ordinary tea is for anyone.

Mother was right, you know. It's an odd thing, isn't it: you never want your mother to be right, but the older you get, the more right you realise your mother was. All those things that mothers say, all those annoying things, turn out to be right.

It seemed an odd thing to say, and yet all of us had a view from somewhere, a view of the world from the perspective of who we were, of what had happened to us, of how we thought about things.

Let's not have a sniffle, let's have a jolly good cry And always remember, the longer you live, the sooner you jolly well die.

Everything was so clear-cut to the student mind; the truth was passionately proclaimed, rather than half-believed in, which was how more experienced people thought of things. The more experienced had generally discovered that there were no longer any privileged, exclusive truths – there were just the various shades of possibility.

If she had listened to her father, if she had listened to the cousin's husband, she would never have married Note and the years of unhappiness would never have occurred. But they did, because she was headstrong, as everyone is at the age of twenty, and when we simply cannot see, however much we may think we can . The world is full of twenty-year-olds, she thought, all of them blind.