Quotes about Experience

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath... We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?" -Donald Miller,Through Painted Deserts

And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.

According to James 1:22-25, we can experience God's truth so powerfully that what the Lord wants us to do becomes as plain to us as our face in the morning mirror. But if we do not apply the truth as we meet it, regardless of how wonderful the experience of discovering the truth has been, we deceive ourselves if we think we will be blessed for giving attention to the Bible on those occasions. The one who "will be blessed in his doing" is the one who does what Scripture says.

They are direct commands. This means too little time, too many responsibilities, too many kids, too much work, too little desire, too little experience, and so on are not excuses that exempt us from the expectation to pray.

I've read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I've made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.

None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.

Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

Don't cry because its over, smile because it happened.

I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

The difference between listening to a radio sermon and going to church...is almost like the difference between calling your girl on the phone and spending an evening with her.