If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.
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.
- Topic: Experience, Wisdom
More Quotes from Mark Twain
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably gracious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
More on These Topics
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.
To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
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.
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.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story.
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.
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.
There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic. A man’s own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health.
Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles in the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.
All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.
Great wisdom is generous, petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech in cantankerous.
The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live accordingly to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.