"Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained."

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“The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.”

“We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.”

“It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.”

“Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.”

“A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.”

“The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another.”

Resonant Thoughts

"You need only look around you, replied PHILO, to satisfy yourself with regard to this question. A tree bestows order and organisation on that tree which springs from it, without knowing the order; an …"

— David Hume

Philosophy1796–1864

#wisdom

"Vocation is the process of making one's way toward something. It is a direction more than a goal. Following a peak experience, one of the conspirators, a housewife who later became a filmmaker, said, …"

— Marilyn Ferguson

Literature1938–2008

#power

"It is a consolation to remember that corruption pushed beyond a certain point provides its own remedy, and that this sort of thing cannot indefinitely continue; but it is less consoling to remember an…"

— Hilaire Belloc

Politics1870–1953

#truth

"I realized that our time in the White House would form the foundation for who they would become and how well we managed this experience could truly make or break them. That is what Barack and I think …"

— Michelle Obama

Politics1964

#time