“Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it.”

—  Louis-ferdinand Céline

Des pays où personne ne va jamais. Interview of February 1960 with Jean Guenot und Jacques d'Arribehaude.
Reported in Céline à Meudon : transcriptions des entretiens avec Jacques d'Arribehaude et Jean Guenot. Éditions Jean Guenot, 1995 ISBN 2-85405-058-4

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it." by Louis-ferdinand Céline?
Louis-ferdinand Céline photo
Louis-ferdinand Céline 88
French writer 1894–1961

Related quotes

Patrick Henry photo

“I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.”

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States

Compare: "You can never plan the future by the past", Edmund Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, Vol. iv. p. 55.
1770s, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" (1775)

Samuel Beckett photo

“I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)
Context: I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows. I was a solid in the midst of other solids.

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi photo

“It’s very simple to light the lamp is so easy. And yet that process of lighting the lamp is enough to eliminate the difficulties in the darkness.”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Inventor of Transcendental Meditation, musician

Context: And now we are wanting everyone in every country through the education department of every government to unfold that inner content of life. It’s very simple to light the lamp is so easy. And yet that process of lighting the lamp is enough to eliminate the difficulties in the darkness.

“A vision of gaunt shapes, sharp shiny steel, dim lamps flaring in the rain. The war machine was rolling.”

John Jakes (1932) American historical novelist and fantasy writer

North and South Trilogy (1982-1987), March into Darkness
Context: He saw it all summed up in the blind marching of that nameless unit. A vision of gaunt shapes, sharp shiny steel, dim lamps flaring in the rain. The war machine was rolling.

Paulo Coelho photo

“No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people's eyes, to reveal the marvels around.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist
Thomas Moore photo

“Thus, when the lamp that lighted
The traveller at first goes out,
He feels awhile benighted,
And looks around in fear and doubt.
But soon, the prospect clearing,
By cloudless starlight on he treads,
And thinks no lamp so cheering
As that light which Heaven sheds.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

I'd mourn the Hopes.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Juhani Aho photo

“WHEN father bought the lamp, or a little before that, he said to mother:
"Hark ye, mother—ought n't we to buy us a lamp?"
"A lamp? What sort of a lamp?"
"What! Don't you know that the storekeeper who lives in the market town has brought from St. Petersburg lamps that actually burn better than ten päreä? [1] They've already got a lamp of the sort at the parsonage."
"Oh, yes! Is n't it one of those things which shines in the middle of the room so that we can see to read in every corner, just as if it was broad daylight?"
"That's just it. There's oil that burns in it, and you only have to light it of an evening, and it burns on without going out till the next morning."
"But how can the wet oil burn?"”

Juhani Aho (1861–1921) Finnish author and journalist

"You might as well ask—how can brandy burn?"
Juhani Aho. " When Father Brought Home the Lamp https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Stories_by_Foreign_Authors_(Scandinavian)/When_Father_Brought_Home_the_Lamp," Translated by R. Nisbet Bain. in: Stories by Foreign Authors–Scandinavian, Cassell Publishing Co. 1898.

Sigmund Freud photo

“If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience that bears witness to the truth, what is one to make of the many people who do not have that experience?”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

1920s, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

Andrew Marvell photo

“Orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green light.”

Andrew Marvell Bermudas

Bermudas (1657)

Related topics