#Experience Quotes

“I have supped full with horrors.”

“Some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time.”

“To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“Time travels at different speeds for different people. I can tell you who time strolls for, who it trots for, who it gallops for, and who it stops cold for.”

“To have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.”

“He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”

“Her father lov'd me; oft invited me;Still question'd me the story of my life,From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,That I have pass'd.”

“I have almost forgotten the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cool’d to hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were in’t: I have supt full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start me.”

“Experience teacheth that resolution is a sole help in need.”

“The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,--life passed through the fire of thought.”

“I remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, "Are you victimizable?”

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

“The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.”

“Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home,And so am come abroad to see the world.”

“It is commonly observed that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and with the rapid wealth come rapid claims which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated.”

“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.”

“Think you a little din can daunt mine ears? Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puffed up with winds, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordinance in the field, And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in a pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang? And do you tell me of a woman's tongue, That gives not half so great a blow to hear As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire? Tush! tush! fear boys with bugs. Grumio: For he fears none.”

“I rather would entreat thy company; To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than, living dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.”

“A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.”

“One can never truly savor success until first tasting adversity.”

“If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it the beauty forsakesall the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.”

“If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience.”

“The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mob.”

“Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.”

“The best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed by those that feel their sharpness.”

“I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad and to travel for it too!”

“Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.”

“Only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.”

“A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.”

“Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not afflicted with imagination; knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.”

“The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.”

“I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.”

“Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals”

“He is the most wretched of men who has never felt adversity.”

“Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof! *It’s sad. Love looks like a nice thing, but it’s actually very rough when you experience it.*”

“Only to youth will spring be spring.”

“Wherever there is power there is age.”

“We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.”

“Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,-must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know.”

“Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.”

“The imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.”

“Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyph to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth.”

“No man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his good is tidings of a better. Onward and onward!”

“Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.”

“It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.”

“The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.”

“If you would learn to write, it is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.”

“You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor.”

“As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress ofthe character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions.”