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Quotes about experience

89 quotes from 75 people

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It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.
F. Scott Fitzgerald1896–1940The Great Gatsby (1925), Chapter VIIn context
Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice
E. M. Forster1879–1970A Room with a View (1908), Part Two, Chapter XIVIn context
- Life & Death
For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Speech in the Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (September 17, 1787); reported in James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, ed. E. H. Scott (1893), p. 741
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790
When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one’s hands full just to be able to remove their trash.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Letter to Johann Kaspar Lavatar (6 March 1780)
- Youth
My worthy friend, gray are all theories,
And green alone Life’s golden tree.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Faust (1808), Scene IV, spoken by MephistophelesIn context
- Ideas
Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.
Baltasar Gracián1601–1658
Experience is as to intensity, and not as to duration.
Thomas Hardy1840–1928Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), Phase the Third: The Rally, Chapter XIXIn context
I am in a chaos of principles⁠—groping in the dark⁠—acting by instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am.
Thomas Hardy1840–1928Jude the Obscure (1895), Part Sixth: At Christminster Again, Chapter IIn context
- Morality
The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers⁠—stern and wild ones⁠—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Nathaniel Hawthorne1804–1864The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XVIIIIn context
- Women
You know more of a road by having travelled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
William Hazlitt1778–1830“On The Conduct of Life” (1822)
You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988Time Enough for Love (1973)
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.
Patrick Henry1736–1799Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death (1775)
- Time
I don’t embrace trouble; that’s as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
‘The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
‘T is paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.’
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ‘t is true, ‘t is true.
A. E. Housman1859–1936When I Was One-and-Twenty (1896)In context
- Love