Quotes About Experience

The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair; for it is governed solely by emotions, and not by reason.

Desire, not experience, is the essence of life; experience becomes the tool of desire in the enlightenment of mind and the pursuit of ends.

So philosophy purifies the will. But philosophy is to be understood as experience and thought, not as mere reading or passive study.

The tragedy of life is that it gives us wisdom only when it has stolen youth.

The author believes that epistemology has kidnapped modern philosophy, and well nigh ruined it; he hopes for the time when the study of the knowledge-process will be recognized as the business of the science of psychology, and when philosophy will again be understood as the synthetic interpretation of all experience rather than the analytic description of the mode and process of experience itself.

At the end, we meet death. Just as experience begins to coördinate itself into wisdom, brain and body begin to decay.

Vanity increases with age.

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. We teach more by what we are than by what we teach.

Knowledge grows, but wisdom, though it can improve with years, does not progress with centuries. I cannot instruct Solomon. So, brave reader, you have fair warning: proceed at your own risk. But I shall be warmed by your company. Will Durant

The secret to having a good time in Ottawa? Move.

Quando tutto ti ricorda qualche altro posto è segno che stai viaggiando da troppo tempo.

I have brought light into this world, and I have been given light from this world. And what light it is! I can say that I have lived. Can you say that you have lived? You must be able to say you have lived. I have loved, and I have been loved. That is all we should want. This is all you have to do right now. It's right in front of you. So just take it. I know I plan to.

Age has a way of giving humans a gravitas that they haven't earned. Like most people, I have essentially the same personality I had at twenty-two. But because a decade has passed since then, I'm given more authority now. I'm thought of as wiser. I'm not. The same shit will happen in another decade. I'll still be the same guy. But "wiser." And as much of an idiot as ever. I like it. I could get used to this adult business.

We don't live in a series of plot points. We should be thankful for that. We should realize how lucky we are.

The gift of story is wisdom

The only thing we'll ever really know are those electrical pulses that are sent up by our senses.

And then you're old, and your life is like a book you read too quickly. All you can remember are a few scattered images and random thoughts. No sense of the whole.

Man was made for joy and woe Then when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine A clothing for the soul to bind.

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?

Man has no Body distinct from his soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

Every harlot was a virgin once

It is right it should be so: Man was made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go.

If you have form'd a Circle to go into, / Go into it yourself & see how you would do.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.