Literary notes about experience (AI summary)
Writers employ "experience" to evoke both the tangible and the abstract, using it to represent personal memories, cumulative learning, and innate intellectual connections. In some works, it signifies the practical wisdom derived from living, as when it underpins discussions on behavior or decision-making [1],[2],[3],[4]. In philosophical and psychological discourse, the term is used to discuss the very fabric of thought and perception—serving as a bridge between innate ideas and learned sensations [5],[6],[7],[8]. Meanwhile, on a more emotional level, experience captures the essence of individual encounters and deep-seated impressions, whether in relation to joy or sorrow [9],[10],[11]. Thus, across literature, "experience" is both a record of personal history and a critical tool for understanding our place in the world.
- We may profit by their experience without paying the price which it cost them.
— from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and James Madison - Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same sort when we wrote the book called 'The Gilded Age.'
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain - Some considerable experience prevented the girl from being at all surprised at any outbreak of ill-temper on the part of Miss Squeers.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens - As I shall not have occasion to refer to Nancy again, I wish to tell here a sad experience she had soon after our arrival in Boston.
— from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller - See experience , a priori connections , etc. Neiglick, I. 543 Neural process , in perception.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James - The mind thinks in proportion to the matter it gets from experience to think about.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 by John Locke - But we may remark that it is the idea of experience, rather than experience itself, with which the mind is filled.
— from Meno by Plato - something that indeed precedes it a priori , but that is intended simply to make cognition of experience possible.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant - His singing of that simple ballad, Martin, is the most trenchant rendering I ever heard in the whole course of my experience.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - A flame kindled round him, making his experience passionate and glowing, burningly real.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
