A Quote by Mark Van Doren

Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail.

Mark Van Doren

Quote Topics

After Avail Before Experience Only Wisdom Words

Quote Author

Mark Van Doren
American - Poet
June 13, 1894 - December 10, 1972

Experience is the best teacher. But in our day and time, what we need is wisdom, because wisdom overcomes experience, because experience is wisdom, but there's a level of wisdom that overcomes the experience, and that's the experience that's already lived by others. I'm not trying to repeat the histories. I already learned from what they did.

Rza

Wisdom comes from experience, but experience is not enough. Experience anticipated and experience revisited is the true source of wisdom.

John Grinder

Experience is knowledge; but knowledge, when it is sought only as a material resource, is not always a blessing. Experience is wisdom; but wisdom, with those who lack vision, is not always power. Experience is tolerance; but tolerance, when it is induced by apathy, is not in the least a virtue.

Ameen Rihani

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.

Wallis Simpson

Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

Bergen Evans

Wisdom is a condition of consciousness rather than an attitude of mind. Wisdom is that state of being in which an individual finds himself when realization has tinctured and transmuted all attitudes and opinions. A wise man is one who has experienced wisdom, wisdom in this sense being a mystical experience.

Manly Hall

The memoirist, like the poet and the novelist, must engage the world, because engagement makes experience, experience makes wisdom, and finally it's the wisdom-or rather the movement toward it-that counts.

Vivian Gornick

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

Terry Pratchett

Wisdom doesn’t come only from the experience you have had, but from the experience you have chosen not to have.

Anthony Marais

We read to find out what the world is like, to experience lots of lives, not just the one we live. If it is true that our lives are chaotic and we crave a shape, stories are the shapes that we put on experience, containing all the wisdom in the world. We can even choose what kind of wisdom suits us.

Ramona Koval

Wisdom and knowledge can best be understood together. Knowledge is learning, the power of the mind to understand and describe the universe. Wisdom is knowing how to apply knowledge and how not to apply it. Knowledge is knowing what to say; wisdom is knowing whether or not to say it. Knowledge gives answers; wisdom asks questions. Knowledge can be taught, wisdom grows from experience.

Starhawk

My past is my wisdom to use today. . . my future is my wisdom yet to experience. Be in the present because that is where life resides.

Gene Oliver

I think that we have a great opportunity to impart our wisdom and our knowledge and our experience to this younger generation. It may be different times, but experience transcends time, and wisdom transcends time.