Quotes About Experience

the past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.

Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.

And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

As William James observed, we must reflect that, when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default. We are at risk, without quite fully realizing it, of living lives that are less our own than we imagine.

When we speak of living environments and their effects on us, then, we are often speaking too broadly—of the city, the countryside, and so on. Our most immediate environment is actually formed by what holds our attention from moment to moment, whether having received or taken it. As William James once put it, "My experience is what I agree to attend to.

As William James observed, we must reflect that, when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default.

It's the same old story," he would say, years later; "the inventor gets the experience, and the capitalist gets the invention.

One man, after receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, found himself followed everywhere with "insensitive and tasteless" ads for funeral services. The theoretical idea that customers might welcome or enjoy such solicitations increasingly seemed like a bad joke.

Somewhere between the fact we know and the anxiety we feel is the reality we live."5

In his preaching, Christ condemned adulterous behavior, but otherwise said nothing in any of the four Gospels about whom you could love, or how you could love. He said nothing about sex between people of the same gender. He said nothing about the superiority of abstinence over experience, nothing about the who and how of coupling, the timing of when to have children and when to practice birth control, all the forbidden sex later codified in exhaustive detail by celibate men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet and philosopher who thought reality was best experienced through a soul in tune with the rhythms of the earth.

An apple that hasn't experienced the hard times of cold is flat, tasteless, bland. But an apple that's hung in the hundred-degree temperatures of day and held through the thirty-five-degree nips of night is a fruit with experience. Cold helps to bring out the acid, which makes an apple tart. Color is painted by warmth.

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages. —DAVE BARRY

People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive. —JOSEPH CAMPBELL, The Power of Myth

The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we're too poor to buy our freedom. With

sometimes having no experience is a huge advantage. Age doesn't matter; an open mind does.

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski: "This is a book that you have to hold, because there are parts of it where you need to turn it upside down to read it. There are certain pages where, you are reading it, and it turns in a circle. . . . This is a book that's an entire sensory experience.

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive." –Joseph Campbell

A common rookie error that inexperienced leaders make is always agreeing with the last person they talked to; this takes a while to get past, though it becomes easy once you get exposed to enough people who contradict each other.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise, instead, seek what they sought." –Matsuo Bash? Japanese poet of the Edo period

Si esto es un hombre y La tregua (Club Círculo de Lectores, 2004), de Primo Levi,

There is a big difference between intelligence and wisdom. Many are fooled into thinking they are the same thing, but they are not. I have seen intelligent serial killers, but I've never seen a wise one.

Experience often deeply embeds the assumptions that need to be questioned in the first place.

Experience often deeply embeds the assumptions that need to be questioned in the first place. When you have a lot of experience with something, you don't notice the things that are new about it. You don't notice the idiosyncrasies that need to be tweaked. You don't notice where the gaps are, what's missing, or what's not really working.