Quotes About Experience

the shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be: and if you observe, you will find that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them. 

Why, at any rate, should he think me capable of great conquests, given my limited experience in the field? Early on, you can expect no one to believe in your destiny as much as yourself.

It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.

I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time. Page 212.

I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.

Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.

I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you.

The world isn't just the way it is. It's how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?

I felt like I was beating a rainbow to death.

I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn't have the stomach to use the sharp edge). The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death.

Time is an illusion that makes us all pant.

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

In his entirely personal experience of them, English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was from the streets. Which is to stay, stab his heart and it would bleed French, slice his brain open and its convolutions would be lined with English and German, and touch his hands and they would feel Spanish.

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant.

An epic simplicity

I concluded, that it was not a dream or a delusion or a misplaced memory or a fancy or any other falsity, but a solid, true thing witnessed while in a weakened highly agitated state.

There are no grounds for going beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound reason for believing anything but our sense experience. A clear intellect, close attention to detail and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious bosh. God does not exist. -- Why tolerate darkness? Everything is here and clear, if only we look carefully.

He's a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.

I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning it's head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.

A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.

A világ nem egyszer?en olyan, amilyen. Olyan, amilyennek felfogjuk, nem? S azzal, hogy valamit felfogunk, valamit hozzá is teszünk, nem igaz? Nem válik-e ettÅ'l történetté az élet is?

Nem! Nem! Nem! A szenvedésem igenis számít. Élni akarok. Muszáj belekevernem az életemet a világegyetem életébe. Az élet egy kémlelÅ'nyílás, az egyetlen pici út egy végtelenségbe – hogyan hagyhatnám ki ezt a kurta, sz?k pillantást, amit a világra vethetek? Nekem csak ez jutott!