Myrtle Reed Quotes

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Experience is not the best teacher. Other people's experience is the best teacher.

Experience comes in two different flavors: your own and the experience of others. Most people can learn from their own experiences quite well, but many people simply ignore the experiences and lessons of others.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

So much stupidity has already oppressed the wretched world that Christians now believe things so absurd that no one ever before could persuade the pagans to believe them.

Every single character I've ever played has a little bit of me in them just because every single human in the world has a little bit of everything in them.

Ultimately, it is only the witness who convinces people, not the teacher.

Wise men learn by others' harms, fools scarcely by their own.

The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire.

It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiencem and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own.

I believe man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature. I produce my own view in the belief that it may be something like the truth.

Thou mayest rule over sin,' Lee. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of battles — only the winners are remembered.

... whoever believes anything esteems that it is a work of charity to persuade another of it.

If wisdom was to cease throughout the world, no one would suspect himself of ignorance.

The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.

Life is not a private affair. A story and its lessons are only made useful if shared.

I don't give a damn if you like Blackbeard. I don't care if you think he is an absolute despot. Do you believe me? If you do, I've done my work.

The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos--and what makes their situation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.

The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart.

When something is staring you in the face in your life and you see it with your own two eyes and feel it within your heart only a fool doesn't believe it to be true.

When people tell me they've learned from experience, I tell them the trick is to learn from other people's experience.

All this was mine; but I was a long time learning that wisdom and experience are things apart; that to taste life is not to be confused with understanding what life is really all about. The shared experiences, the wisdom so freely proffered by others, in words and in example, rarely swayed me for long. Came another day and the import was gone, and only the echo of the laughter remained. Experience was a revolving sun in the warmth of which I was content to bask.

There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.