Quotes about Experience

The world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal experience. There's lots of good fish in the sea . . . maybe . . . but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.

How she hated words, always coming between her and life: they did the ravishing, if anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the life-sap out of living things.

It is far, far better to read one book six times, at intervals, than to read six several books. Because if a certain book can call you to read it six times, it will be a deeper and deeper experience each time, and will enrich the whole soul, emotional and mental. Whereas six books read once only are merely an accumulation of superficial interests , the burdensome accumulation of modern days, quantity without real value.

Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

The real joy of a book lies in reading it over and over again, and always finding it different, coming upon another meaning, another level of meaning.

I knew from experience that this statement was true, for I myself had been searching for years to discover a practical, working handbook on human relations.

I am satisfied ... I see, dance, laugh, sing.

The real war will never get in the books.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots

To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls. -from Song of the Open Road

What stays with you longest and deepest? Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

To be in any form, what is that? (round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,) If nothing lay more develop'd the quahung in it's callous shell were enough. Mine is no callous shell. I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop, they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me. I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and I am happy, to touch my person to someone else's is about as much as I can stand.