“Some of life's best lessons are learned at the worst times.”
Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist
Lost Woman Song
Song lyrics
Source: American Pastoral
“Some of life's best lessons are learned at the worst times.”
Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist
Lost Woman Song
Song lyrics
“and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.”
Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
“The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it's teaching.”
Salman Rushdie book Joseph Anton: A Memoir
Source: Joseph Anton: A Memoir
Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Variant: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.
Source: Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 19: Hamburgers,Skyline and Deadline
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Context: Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy. Sure, I'd gotten tired of this tiny space, but I'd had a good home here. In the time it takes to swill two cans of beer, all had had sublimed like morning mist. My job, my whiskey, my peace and quiet, my solitude, my Sormerset Maugham, and John Ford collections-all of it trashed and worthless.
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
Source: " A Case of Voluntary Ignorance http://www.christiebooks.com/ChristieBooksWP/2013/11/a-case-of-voluntary-ignorance-by-aldous-huxley/" in Collected Essays (1959)
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Speech on Afghanistan (4 January 1980) http://millercenter.org/president/carter/speeches/speech-3403 <br class="br">Presidency (1977–1981), 1978
Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer
"Sun of Helioscope", in Castle of the Otter (1982), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction