Aldous Huxley on experience

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can’t be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

To us, the moment 8:17 A.M. means something⁠—something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance⁠—did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson were part inventors of time.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Mark Twain1835–1910

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

Mark Twain1835–1910

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn. My God do you learn.