
“Some of life's best lessons are learned at the worst times.”
Lost Woman Song
Song lyrics
Source: American Pastoral
“Some of life's best lessons are learned at the worst times.”
Lost Woman Song
Song lyrics
“and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.”
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
“The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it's teaching.”
Source: Joseph Anton: A Memoir
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.
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)
Speech on Afghanistan (4 January 1980) http://millercenter.org/president/carter/speeches/speech-3403
Presidency (1977–1981), 1978
"Sun of Helioscope", in Castle of the Otter (1982), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction