“Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!”

— Robert Browning

"Saul", xviii.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

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Robert Browning 179

English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era 1812–1889

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“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

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Texts and Pretexts (1932), p. 5
Variant: Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.
Source: Texts & Pretexts: An Anthology With Commentaries
Context: The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials — in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves. By a happy dispensation of nature, the poet generally possesses the gift of experience in conjunction with that of expression.