“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”

Last update Nov. 2, 2021. History

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Ralph Waldo Emerson727

American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

Related quotes

“Life is a succesion of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Variant: Life can only be understood going backward, but must be lived going forward.

“Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.”

Eric Roth (1945) American screenwriter

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

“It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Journals IV A 164 (1843)
See Phenomenology: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, by Dermot Moran (2002)
Variants:
We live forward, but we understand backward.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

“The painful experience of many gamblers has taught us the lesson that no system of betting is successful in improving the gambler's chances. If the theory of probability is true to life, this experience must correspond to a provable statement.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter VIII, Unlimited Sequences Of Bernoulli Trials, p. 198.

“This year I learned the most important lesson in my life, which is to never make fun of men; and if you have to make fun of them, just joke about their success.”

Yang Li (1992) Chinese stand-up comedian

Source: "‘Sexist’ female stand-up comedian Yang Li’s return sweeps Chinese social media again by gender issues" https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231854.shtml?id=11 in Global Times (18 August 2021)