Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish writer and playwright, author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and the comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. He was as known for his wit in conversation as for his work. In 1895 he was sentenced to two years' hard labour for homosexuality, which broke him; he died in Paris three years after his release.
About this theme: Wisdom
In the Western tradition wisdom is almost always defined by what it is not. Socrates is famous for claiming to know that he knew nothing; that was not modesty but method. Knowledge is a set of facts, wisdom is knowing what to do with them — and, more often, knowing when there are not enough of them.
More by Oscar Wilde
- To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
- Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
More on Wisdom
- Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small.— Lao Tzu
- An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.— Benjamin Franklin
- Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.— Arthur Schopenhauer
- He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.— Lao Tzu
- Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.— Baruch Spinoza