Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.

Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionately to their occupancy of your thoughts.

Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story.