Careful Words

experience (n.)

experience (v.)

Unless experience be a jewel.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merry Wives of Windsor. Act ii. Sc. 2.

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;

A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,

Which sought through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere.

An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,

Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again;

The birds singing gayly, that came at my call,

Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.

J Howard Payne (1792-1852): Home, Sweet Home. (From the opera of "Clari, the Maid of Milan.")

I have gained my experience.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act iv. Sc. 1.

  The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): Pitt's Reply to Walpole. Speech, March 6, 1741.

  Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790): Maxims prefixed to Poor Richard's Almanac, 1757.

  I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

Patrick Henry (1736-1799): Speech in the Virginia Convention. March, 1775.

Remote from cities liv'd a swain,

Unvex'd with all the cares of gain;

His head was silver'd o'er with age,

And long experience made him sage.

John Gay (1688-1732): Fables. Part i. The Shepherd and the Philosopher.

Till old experience do attain

To something like prophetic strain.

John Milton (1608-1674): Il Penseroso. Line 173.

  The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers, is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): My Study Windows. Abraham Lincoln, 1864.

For just experience tells, in every soil,

That those that think must govern those that toil.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Traveller. Line 372.

  I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like it. Act iv. Sc. 1.