Quotes & Sayings About First Hand Experience

Knowing a great deal about what is in the world art, catastrophe, the beauties of nature through photographic images, people are frequently disappointed, surprised, unmoved when the see the real thing. For photographic images tend to subtract feeling from something we experience at first hand and the feelings they do arouse are, largely, not those we have in real life. Often something disturbs us more in photographed form than it does when we actually experience it. — Susan Sontag

To make possible the subjection of eternal, spiritual organized intelligences to perishable, material structures, certain natural laws would naturally be brought into operation. From the point of view of the eternal spirit, it might mean the breaking of a law directed towards eternal life; yet to secure the desired contact with matter, the spirit was compelled to violate the law. Thus, in this earth life, a man who desires to acquire a first hand acquaintance with magnetism and electricity, may subject himself to all kinds of electric shocks, that, perhaps, will affect his body injuriously; yet, for the sake of securing the experience, he may be willing to do it. Adam, the first man, so used natural laws that his eternal, spiritual body became clothed upon with an earthly body, subject to death. Then in begetting children, he was able to produce earthly bodies for the waiting spirits. According — John Andreas Widtsoe

If one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business. — C.S. Lewis

The leading principle of the goal is distinguished by first-hand experience, beyond speech, imagination, and words, reaching the realm where there is no impulse, the inherent characteristic of arrival at the stage of first-hand realization, excluding all the destructive forces of speculation and dogmatism." "The — Thomas Cleary

Odysseus draped the towel over his shoulders and stretched his back. "You remember practicing with wooden swords? All the moves, the blocks, the counters, getting your footwork right, learning how to be in balance always?"
"Of course you were a hard master."
"And you recall the first time you went into a real fight, with blood being shed and the fear of death in the air?"
"I do"
"The moves are the same, but the difference is wider than the Great Green. Love is like that, Helikaon. You can spend time with a whore and laugh and know great pleasure. But when love strikes
ah, the difference is awesome. You will find more joy in the touch of a hand or the sight of a smile than you could ever experience in a hundred nights of passion with anyone else. The sky will be more blue, the sun more bright. Ah, I am missing my Penelope tonight — David Gemmell

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment. — Bell Hooks

First you must face your own reality in the present, here and now! If you fail to do that, if you do not obtain first-hand experience from it, there will be no deep, far-reaching changes in you. — Frank M. Wanderer

My first trip to China, in 1995, was among the most memorable of my life. The Fourth World Conference on Women, at which I declared, "Human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights," was a profound experience for me. I felt the heavy hand of Chinese censorship when the government blocked the broadcast of my speech, both throughout the conference center and on official television and radio. Most — Hillary Rodham Clinton

When did we ever get this notion that our elders have little to offer society? The years of practical experience, the knowledge of past events for first-hand historical accounts, and the wisdom for dealing with problems they faced before us have given the elderly the role of Wise One or Sage in most cultures around the world. But in our self-centered, individualistic, now-oriented culture, we can leave our debts from the past in a nursing home and our debts for the future to our children. — Michael S. Horton

Every day as I wave to my children when I drop them off at school, or let one of them have a new experience - like crossing the street without holding my hand - I experience the struggle between love and non-attachment. It is hard to bear - the extreme love of one's child and the thought that ultimately the child belongs to the world. There is this horrible design flaw - children are supposed to grow up and away from you; and one of you will die first. — Sarah Ruhl

I am an enthusiastic European, and my first-hand experience of war and hatred has strengthened that conviction. I have seen how misguided unilateral nationalistic identities have brought destruction and death. I am, however, a world citizen, too. — Klaus Schwab

Why shouldn't we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us collapse at the first grip of pain. We sit down at the door of God's purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. And all the so-called Christian sympathy of others helps us to our deathbed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, "Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine." If God can accomplish His purposes in this world through a broken heart, then why not thank Him for breaking yours? — Oswald Chambers

It is a strange feeling for a girl when first she finds the power put into her hand of influencing the destiny of another to happiness or misery. She is like a magician holding for the first time a fairy wand, not having yet had experience of its potency. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The imagination is also sometimes commended for offering us in vicarious form experiences which we are unable to enjoy at first hand. If you can't afford an air ticket to Kuala Lumpur, you can always read Conrad and imagine yourself in South-East Asia. If you have been monotonously married for forty years, you can always lay furtive hands on a copy of James Joyce's letters. Literature on this view is a kind of supplement to our unavoidably impoverished lives - a sort of spiritual prosthesis which extends our capabilities beyond their normal restricted range. It is true that everyone's experience is bound to be limited, and that art can valuably augment it. But why the lives of so many people should be imaginatively impoverished is then a question that can be easily passed over. — Terry Eagleton

There is nobody as brave as a baby taking his/her first non-stop 5 steps alone from Mummy's hand to daddy's hand ... trust me on that — Sameh Elsayed

Abominations. He did not say the last word aloud, but she felt something like pain echo through him, pity.
"You sound like you know a lot about this kind of thing?"
"You could say I have first hand experience." Valdagerion was looking up at the tanks a dark twisted pain in his eyes. The expression made her heart pound with alarm. The alien was wounded, the kind of deep physiological wounds that could make a person very dangerous. — D.M. Alexandra

The only way out is spiritual, intellectual, and emotional revolution in which, finally, we learn to experience first hand the interloping connections between person and person, organism and organism, action and consequence. — Gregory Bateson

I guess experience is just learning at first hand the things you knew all along anyway. — Kathleen Winsor

In my own experience as president of Brazil I observed first hand many of the trends that Nam identifies in this book, but he describes them in a way that is as original as it is delightful to read. All those who have power-or want it-should read this book. — Fernando Henrique Cardoso

This first part may be a little rough.' He waved a hand and did his best to appear as if he'd had enormous experience with levitating buildings. — Michael Pryor

Please, for the love of all that is good:
Visit the countries you choose to defend, before you defend them.
Experience first hand the cultures you chose to defend, before you defend them.
Take part in the religions you tell others about, before you tell others about them. — Keith Hebner

Life probably does not hand us any more visceral experience of how we mistakenly define ourselves than by means of our physical body. From the day we were born, the message we received from the world was that we are our body. This was the first great lie we were given by means of the collective consciousness of humankind, which has always valued itself from the outside in. — Dennis Merritt Jones

Paris was incredible. Everything about it for me, from spending hours eating, drinking and talking to walking through the streets ... at that time I hadn't seen that sort of political passion in the youth, and I got to experience that first hand. — Kate Hudson

I have learned from first hand experience that war is the destroyer of everything that is good in the world, it turns our young into soulless killers and we tell them that they are heroes when they master the 'art' of killing. — Kevin Benderman

In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram - impersonal and unattainable - the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive. — Evelyn Underhill

I am the mother of three children whose birth mother died of cancer when they were young. When I met them, they were ages twelve, ten, and eight, all grieving in very different ways. I have seen first hand the pain and confusion that accompanies childhood loss. But I have also seen the healing that can take place when children begin to understand who Jesus is and how much He loves them. By using our family's personal experience as a foundation, I hope this book will be a refuge for grieving children to express their sorrow, to feel understood in all their pain, and to come to know that God is their ultimate source of comfort, healing, hope, and joy here on earth, as well as in heaven. — Kathleen Fucci

Mysticism, according to its historical and psychological definitions, is the direct intuition or experience of God; and a mystic is a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience
one whose religion and life are centered, not merely on an accepted belief or practice, but on that which the person regards as first hand personal knowledge. — Evelyn Underhill

Being called baby: like safaris and bowling leagues, a phenomenon she never thought she'd experience first hand. — Curtis Sittenfeld

You know in most fantasy books the main meat is venison? Ever wonder how it tastes? I can tell you from first hand experience that venison tastes delicious. So does roasted duck, lamb and mutton. — Katie Thornton-K.

More and more we're negating the validity of first-hand experience of people from other countries and other cultures ... whether it's on TV, the Internet, mobile phones or whatever - the world system we live in so values second-hand information. — Nitin Sawhney

It is one thing to hear about the forest and the river, but an entirely other experience to go there, to see the environment, and to appreciate the natural riches there first-hand. — Chris Kilham

It was the face of spring, it was the face of summer, it was the warmness of clover breath. Pomegranate glowed in her lips, and the noon sky in her eyes. To touch her face was that always new experience of opening your window one December morning, early, and putting out your hand to the first white cool powdering of snow that had come, silently, with no announcement, in the night. And all of this, this breath-warmness and plum-tenderness was held forever in one miracle of photographic is chemistry which no clock winds could blow upon to change one hour or one second; this fine first cool white snow would never melt, but live a thousand summers. — Ray Bradbury

I very much love a physical book myself. I think people who have had this experience of also seeing a book come together, from sitting down and writing the first word, to holding the binding in your hand, we have a deeper sentimental attachment to it than others might. — Edwidge Danticat

I have been privileged to be briefed and to know that we have been visited [by aliens]. I do not have first hand experience in this regard, but I have been on investigating teams and I have been briefed by insiders who do know. — Edgar Mitchell

The mystic lives and looks; and speaks the disconcerting language of first-hand experience. — Evelyn Underhill

Cassie fumbled helplessly beneath the shade of the ancient oak, still searching for her second shoe.The first had been easy to find, having landed close to where she had kicked it off; and when her hand had finally encountered it, she clutched it to her breast in a gesture of smug triumph. For one brief moment, she felt a twinge of sympathy for the sighted people who would never experience such sweet victory from a task as simple as finding a shoe. — Melinda Cross

I always was fascinated by space and always wanted to learn more about it and wanted to experience it first hand by flying into space. I don't know how it began or where it began. Maybe I was born with it. Maybe it's in my genes. — Anousheh Ansari

Truth makes little sense and has no real impact if it is merely a collection of abstract ideas. Truth that is living experience, on the other hand, is challenging, threatening, and transforming. The first kind of truth consists of information collected and added, from a safe distance, to our mental inventory. The second kind involves risking our familiar and coherent interpretation of the world -it is an act of surrender, of complete and embodied cognition that is seeing, feeling, intuiting, and comprehending all at once. Living truth leads us ever more deeply into the unknown territory of what our life is. — Reginald A. Ray

You ask whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not such a fool as that. But if one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the things they call love, I have what is better - the experience of Sappho, of Euripides, of Catallus, of Shakespeare, of Spenser, of Austen, of Bronte, of anyone else I have read. — C.S. Lewis

Why should we not have a first-hand and immediate experience of God? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'd heard about Texas football and how much of a religion it is, but to go to Odessa and experience it first-hand is something different than just hearing about it. — Jay Hernandez

I was looking through half-open eyes at the sky, like the first man, and thinking about how - there you are - my uncle had died, about how they would now be burying him, about how I would never meet him. I stood petrified, thinking that one day I too would die. At the same time I was horror-stricken to realize that my mother would also die. All of this came rushing upon me in a flash of a peculiar violet color, in a twinkling, and the sudden activity in my intestines and in my heart told me that what had seemed at first just a foreboding was indeed the truth. This experience made me realize, without any circumlocution, that I would die one day, and so would my mother, and my sister Anna. I couldn't imagine how one day my hand would die, how my eyes would die. Looking over my hand, I caught this thought on my palm, connected to my body, indivisible from it. — Danilo Kis

Believing is not the same as knowing. Believing is second-hand knowledge, whereas knowing is first-hand experience. When your action comes from a level of belief, there is fear, doubt and restlessness behind such action. When your action comes from a level of knowing, there is conviction, certainty and calm behind such action. — Yogi Kanna

Experience taught me that working families are often just one pay check away from economic disaster. And it showed me first-hand the importance of every family having access to good health care. — Dave Obey

But what the long walk had not done was reveal the cause of the inherent distaste that had sprung out of nowhere overtaking her there under the tree. On the cold, damp grass, or up against the rough tree trunk. He had done it many times without a second thought, and in more challenging situations. It would have been nothing at all to wrap her long legs around his waist, brace one hand against the tree trunk, hold her tight with his other arm, and give the lady exactly what she wanted.

But for some reason he had not been able to do it. For the first time in his life, his body had been willing but his mind had not. Labeling the experience unpleasant would be a severe understatement. — Evangeline Collins