Attributed to Russell in Slaby's Sixty Ways to Make Stress Work for You (1987)
Attributed from posthumous publications
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
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.
"An Interview With The Black Swan — Mila Kunis" https://medium.com/hope-lies-at-24-frames-per-second/an-interview-with-the-black-swan-mila-kunis-c365cb3c33e0 (11 May 2011)
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
“So what do you think will happen?”
Sawyer asked the barman who was drawing his mid-morning pint.
“Dunno,” the man grunted. “Except one thing. I know we’ve been led by fools and rogues, but this is the first time we’ve ever been led by a criminal!”
Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 23 (p. 177)
