Quotes About Lessons

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.

So I conclude that John Kennedy would have eventually gotten out of Vietnam rather than move more deeply in. I express this judgment now because, in light of it, I must explain how and why we—including Lyndon Johnson—who continued in policy-making roles after President Kennedy's death made the decisions leading to the eventual deployment to Vietnam of half a million U.S. combat troops. Why did we do what we did, and what lessons can be learned from our actions?

It is the absence of something that best teaches its value and meaning.

Here she was trying to teach him the Peasant Shuffle. He could not hope to master it all in a night, of course; at the Peasants' School in Zug they had spent an entire semester on Cringing alone.

We are well advised to accept the reality that the great lessons in life often come to us through some form of extreme hardship.

When we are children, we believe that our elders know all and that even when we cannot understand the world, they can make sense of it. Even after we are grown, in moments of fear or sorrow, we still turn instinctively to the older generation, hoping to finally learn some great hidden lesson about death and pain. Only to learn instead that the only lesson is that life goes on.

The problem is not that we forget the past. It is that we recall it too well. Children recall wrongs that enemies did to their grandfathers, and blame the granddaughters of the old enemies. Children are not born with memories of those who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn't tell their children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.

Time is an unkind teacher, delivering lessons that we learn far too late for them to be useful.

No hardship endured is a loss. Someone will learn from it. Someone profits from it.

The problem is not that we forget the past. It is that we recall it too well. Children recall wrongs that enemies did to their grandfathers, and blame the granddaughters of the old enemies. Children are not born with memories of who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn't tell children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.

His lessons cautioned me that great events often hinged on small ones. (Bee talking about the Fool)

Pain is the coin they use now in all their transactions. Nothing else teaches them, nothing else will satisfy them.

Time is an unkind teacher, delivering lessons that we learn far too late for them to be useful. Years after I could have benefited from them, the insights come to me. Now

Time is an unkind teacher, delivering lessons that we learn far too late for them to be useful. Years after I could have benefited from them, the insights come to me.

Life hands us lessons, and my lesson was to face this awful situation and grow from it, Blossom. I thought love had been taken away from me, but it hadn't been. I was still the same person who had loved Mr. Feingold and my old aunts and my cousins and my friends. I still ahd love inside of me, and I still had it to give.

How do we show our children our love? Each in our own way by a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons.

It's usually the roughest waters that teach us the most.

When you screw up you own it, you make amends, you learn your lesson.

Sometimes you learn your best lessons when you add up all your losses." She

His study of war had only reinforced its futility.

Stories tell us how we should live.

Sometimes you must experience heartache to have a treasured result.

I now understand that we learned these songs and stories not just to teach us how to behave but because we would be living out variations of them over and over again throughout our lives.

Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives its many flaws and quirks.