James Fenimore Cooper Quotes

One wouldn't want to have the same dilemmas at 50 as one had at 15. And indeed I don't. I have a very different take on life.

I learned from my past.

I think the most important thing that I've learned is that you live and you learn. Try not to make the same mistakes twice.

Age acquires no value save through thought and discipline.

Success is a wonderful thing, but it tends not to be the sort of experience that we learn from. We enjoy it; perhaps we even deserve it. But we don't acquire wisdom from it.

And maybe I'm a little smarter now than I was before for all the stupid things I've done.

I feel about 18, but my mind is much more mature now, so it's a perfect combination.

By the time I'm 90, I hope to have it together.

Education is the manifestation of perfection present already in man.

I have learned from my mistakes and become older.

I've made my share of mistakes, but I've learned.

I've learned my lessons, but I'm also still learning them.

With age and experience, I started to know myself better.

As I grow older, I like to think I'm getting a little bit more mature.

A bruise is a lesson... and each lesson makes us better.

It’s not like your soul gets older. It gets wiser.

I just think if you're 44 years old and you're not smarter than you were when you were 35 years old or 25 years old, just stay in your room.

A failure remains a failure only if we refuse to learn from it. Any situation that teaches us greater humility, sobriety, wisdom about self and others, responsibility, forgiveness, depth of reflection, and better decision making -\-\teaching us what's truly important-\-\is not an ultimate failure. Sometimes what we deem a failure at the time it happens actually serves to foster a change within us that creates an even greater success down the road.

I grow old, ever learning many things.

Don't wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don't wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don't wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom. The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become. Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.

I was lucky in that I had a mother that was full of this colloquial wisdom and she used to say to me 'You know, failure is not the opposite of success, it's the stepping stone to success. There is nobody who has not failed along the way.' So I think its very important for young women, especially as they are starting in life, to recognize that because otherwise, they only see people's success. So, when I speak, I speak of my failures.

How then is perfection to be sought? Wherein lies our hope? In education, and in nothing else.

Far best is he who is himself all-wise, and he, too, good who listens to wise words; But whoso is not wise or lays to hear another's wisdom is a useless man.

The end of knowledge is wisdom The end of culture is perfection The end of wisdom is freedom The end of education is character. And character consists of eagerness to renounce one's selfish greed.

The years that pass eat up your margin for error until there is no margin left. The mistakes you make are no longer flaws of inexperience, they are flaws of character. To be young is to be constantly on the precipice of perfection—just a little further and you’ll get there—but you never get there, and suddenly you’re old, and find yourself in a permanent state of imperfection, which you must reckon with.