It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition – such as lifting weights – we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.

There are no black holes in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity.

Take advantage of the years of pioneering efforts. You might find this boring, as the young want to rush head on, as it were.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

There’s one advantage in having been around as long as I have. Everybody in the Senate knows me, and – I’m going to say something presumptuous, to repeat myself – I think most respect me.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

I am not young enough to know everything.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.

My experience with power, you can maintain it, or you get it taken from you. You get you some newfound power and go crazy, and it get taken from you quick.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.

Our experience of any painting is always the latest line in a long conversation we’ve been having with painting. There’s no way of looking at art as though you hadn’t seen art before.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

To ‚choose‘ dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

You don’t even really need a place. But you feel like you’re doing something. That is what coffee is. And that is one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture.

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

We are often raised as dependents then given over to teachers. It’s experience and exploration that can transform us and lead to mastery.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Every time I come to Europe, I’m just as excited as I was my very first time, which was many, many years ago. I love that part of the world, and I especially love the fans.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.

Whoever doesn’t know it must learn and find by experience that ‚a quiet conscience makes one strong!‘

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

I worked with Lawrence Olivier some years ago. He was a great mentor.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

My relationship with the mountains actually started when I was 16. Every year, a group used to be taken from Auckland Grammar down to the Tangariro National Park for a skiing holiday.

My music definitely comes from a place of experience. Everything connects to a truth.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.