We Never Learn Quotes

Nor did these society people add to Elstir's work in their mind's eye that temporal perspective which enabled them to like, or at least to look without discomfort at, Chardin's painting. And yet the older among them might have reminded themselves that in the course of their lives they had gradually seen, as the years bore them away from it, the unbridgeable gulf between what they considered a masterpiece by Ingres and what they had supposed must forever remain a "horror" (Manet's Olympia, for example) shrink until the two canvases seemed like twins. But we never learn, because we lack the wisdom to work backwards from the particular to the general, and imagine ourselves always to be faced with an experience which has no precedents in the past. ~ Marcel Proust

We plunge into love with a naivete that ignores all prior humiliations. Thank goodness, I guess. Because we never learn, we reach for love again and again. ~ Michael Perry

We never learn to value what is simple; what is difficult is worthy to us. But, the beauty of life is in the simplicity. ~ Debasish Mridha

Why would they lie to us?"
"Because deep down, we're all afraid of having peace. Because deep down we know we're all poisoned. We're more afraid of ourselves than we are of others. In that thinking, we deny ourselves the very power that we could have. In that thinking, we put liars on pedestals. Then, when the time is right they proclaim their lies as truth and revel in it as if they did something truly righteous and people will fall to their knees because we never learn if our mistakes are never admitted and cataloged. What better way to destroy a person than to make them realize that everything they ever believed was wrong? ~ Celia Mcmahon

I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach. ~ Maya Angelou

History, the winnowing wind, never halts. We see the chaff rise, forget the waiting grain, seed of the future, fallen to the threshing floor. We never learn, but live on, slit-narrow, as if our living were a pencil line traced upon paper, behaving as trapped denizens of a flat world hemmed in by the bigoted horizon of our own making. Yet the meaning of living is a pushing back, a pulling down of the great walls and domes of fear and ignorance, is relinquishing the nest for the sky, ignorance for understanding. The look back is also a look forward. ~ Han Suyin

We eat pancakes to escape loneliness, yet within moments we want nothing more than our freedom from ever having so much as thought about pancakes. Nothing can prevent us, after eating pancakes, from feeling the most awful regret. After eating pancakes, our great mission in life becomes the repudiation of the pancakes and everything served along with them, the bacon and the syrup and the sausage and coffee and jellies and jams. But these things are beneath mention, compared with the pancakes themselves. It is the pancake
Pancakes! Pancakes!
that we never learn to respect. ~ Donald Antrim

If we truly want to learn, we never learn when we are talking. We only learn when we are listening. ~ James Altucher

We complain that the world is an ugly place to live and grow; we never learn to see the beauty of the world. ~ Debasish Mridha

Dare to be a sucky skateboarder or a lousy video editor or a completely crappy golfer. If we do only the stuff we're good at, we never learn anything new. ~ Justin Bieber

Catholic versus Protestant, essentially. It's that kind of fight ... And it goes on to this day. Will we never learn? Who knows? Religion. Shit it. ~ Stephen Fry

Do you know what I love most about humans, pet? It's our utter dogged stupidity. When it comes to love we never learn. Ever. Even when we know the risks. Even when it makes much more sense to relocate to individualized climate-controlled caves, where our hearts have at least a fighting chance at remaining intact. We know the risks of opening our hearts up. And yet we keep doing it anyway. We keep falling in love and having babies and buying shoes that look incredible but feel like death. We keep adopting puppies and making friends and buying white sofas that we know we're going to drop a slice of pizza facedown on. We just keep doing it. Is it ignorance? Amnesia? Or is it something else? Something braver? ~ Jenna Evans Welch

We never learn anything, never in the world, and in spite of all the history books written. They're just the way we plead or ague with ourselves about it, but it's only light from the outside that we're supposed to take inside. If we can. There's a regular warehouse of fine suggestions and if we're not better it isn't because there aren't plenty of marvelous and true ideas to draw on, but because our vanity weighs more than all of them put together. ~ Saul Bellow

We never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn. We never get anything new. We all start complete. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

To fail at trying is worse than to fail after trying. If we never try, then we never learn. ~ Lindsey Rietzsch

It's nobody's fault that our hearts work in their little strange ways. It's nobody's fault that we fall for one another. It's nobody's fault that we can't have the love we yearn. It's nobody's fault that we never learn. So, save your apology, my dear. Save it for later days. Save it for better days. ~ Noor Iskandar

Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

There are some temptations that cannot be resisted, some lessons we never learn. ~ Susan Hill

Oh we're not together. I mean, we're sitting together and we came here together but obviously we're not together-together. How could we be together? I'm probably never going to see him again after today. We're not even friends. I don't even know him. I mean, you know, really-" I inclined my head toward her and a small laugh burst from my lips, "can you even imagine? It'd be like Planet of the Apes- and he's Charlton Heston with all the muscles and such and I'm that girl ape. They can't be together because it'd be like a Neanderthal with a human, cross species breeding ... and that's just not right. Although Neanderthals are closely related to humans and are in fact part of the same species- if you want to be precise- they are a sub-species or alternate species of human ... ~ Penny Reid

Here's the problem with Common Core. The Department of Education, like every federal agency, will never be satisfied. They will not stop with it being a suggestion. They will turn it into a mandate.In fact, what they will begin to say to local communities is, you will not get federal money unless do you things the way we want you to do it. And they will use Common Core or any other requirements that exists nationally to force it down the throats of our people in our states. ~ Marco Rubio

Nick,' he corrected quietly. 'As to your emotions, they show in your face, in
those amazing eyes. One day soon those eyes will change colour and glow
for me.'
'They already have done,' Joanna snapped, rage surfacing. 'I never liked you,
Mr Martella, and now I can only think I hate you. If I should ever know that
you're coming here again I'll make quite sure I'm a long way off!'
He took one menacing step towards her and Joanna backed away, her
expression of loathing making his face harden frighteningly.
'I will not touch you,' he grated angrily. 'I will merely tell you this: J leave
for America tomorrow. I shall be there for two months. When I return I
intend to come for you.'
The thought of people in the house left Joanna's head entirely. Her hands
clenched at her sides and her considerable temper surfaced over grief, fear
and utter bewilderment.
'If you were the last man in the universe I wouldn't consent to be near you!'
she shouted. 'You've taken away everything I've ever wanted. You've even
sneaked up and taken my father. Now I can never go to Santa Marta again!'
'I know you love the island,' he said with surprising quiet. 'Your father told
me. We will live there and you will see your father whenever you care to
walk down the beach to his house.'
'I'll see him when he comes over to England,' Joanna corrected bitterly. 'One
thing is for sure, though ~ Patricia Wilson

You people are all insane. How I ended up with you, I'll never know."
Breeze laughed. "Now, that's a lie, Cett. You know exactly how you ended up joining with us. We
threatened to kill you if you didn't! ~ Brandon Sanderson

When will we get the chance to be just friends? It's never safe for us, not even in the evening, cuz I've been drinking. Not in the morning, when your shit works. It's always dangerous when everybody's sleeping, and I've been thinking ... Can we be alone? ~ Amy Winehouse

First we have to see. Or first we have to be taught to see. We have to be taught to see here, because here is everywhere, related to everywhere else, and if we don't see, hear, taste, smell and feel in this place - not only will we never know anything but the world of sense will be by that much diminished everywhere. ~ William Carlos Williams

My hands are heavy and most importantly they are very fast. I have been called the fastest white man alive. I don't work submissions and not because I am trying to prove something I'm just frankly not very good at 'em. I am very good at getting away. I've never fought anybody whether it was in practice or competition who could hold me down. Even if I thought I could get a submission I'm not laying underneath a grown man with my legs spread on worldwide T.V. Some guys subscribe to that theory but I am a Republican and we don't do that ~ Chael Sonnen

Many people hold onto a grudge because it offers the illusion of power and a perverse feeling of security. But in fact, we are held hostage by our anger. It is never too late to forgive. But you can forgive too soon. I am especially wary of what I call "saintly forgiveness." Premature forgiveness is common among people who avoid conflict. They're afraid of their own anger and the anger of others. But their forgiveness is false. Their anger goes underground. I define forgiving as letting someone back into your heart. This returns us to a loving state -- and not merely within the relationship -- we feel good about ourselves and the world. True forgiveness isn't easy, but it transforms us significantly. To forgive is to love and to feel worthy of love. In that sense, it is always worthwhile. ~ Robert Karen

The tragedy of the United States in this century is not the crackup of an empire, which we never knew what to do with in the first place, but the collapse of the idea of the citizen as someone autonomous whose private life is not subject to orders from above. ~ Gore Vidal

Mastery lies on an infinite continuum, and as a result we will never reach the end. We can, however, see to it that we are as far along that continuum as our circumstance allows. ~ Chris Matakas

Where then is this self, if it is neither in the body nor the soul? And how can one love the body or the soul except for the sake of such qualities, which are not what makes up the self, since they are perishable? Would we love the substance of a person's soul, in the abstract, whatever qualities might be in it? That is not possible, and it would be wrong. Therefore we never love anyone, but only qualities. ~ Blaise Pascal

Six silent people in a room got me to thinking about the voice we hear in our heads when we read, the universal narrator's voice you may well be hearing right now. Whose voice *is* it you're hearing? It's not your own, is it? I didn't think so. It never is. So I posed the question out loud ... "
" ... When you read a book, whose voice is it you hear inside your head?"
"It's certainly not my own", said Harj, and the others chimed in with the same claim.
"Then whose it? ~ Douglas Coupland

Emma, I came out here to tell you that you don't have to mate with Grom."
I raise a brow. "Uh, I was never going to mate with Grom."
"What I mean is, Grom is mating with someone else who has the gift of Poseidon. Which means that-"
"I don't have to mate with Grom," I finish for him.
"That's what I just said."
"I mean, I don't have to feel like I've let the entire species of Syrena go extinct because I won't mate with Grom."
He grins. "Exactly."
"But that doesn't change what I am-a Half-Breed. You still can't be with me, can you?"
He rubs his thumb over my bottom lip, thoughtful. "The law forbids it right now. But I think if we give it time, we could get it overturned somehow. And I'm not going anywhere until I do."
He turns us toward the SUV, stopping to retrieve my heels from the side of the road. He helps me in the passenger seat of the Escalade, then hands me my shoes.
"Thank you," I tell him as he walks around to the driver's side.
"It's a little late to blush," he says, strapping in.
"I don't think I'll ever stop blushing."
"I really hope not," he says, shutting his door. Taking my face into both hands, he pulls me to him again. His lips brush mine, but I want more. Sensing my intention, he puts his hand over mine and the seat belt I'm trying to unsnap. "Emma," he says against my lips. "I've missed you so much. But we can't. Not yet."
I'm not trying to do that, I just want to get in a better position t ~ Anna Banks

Today, people just want to live their lives, they don't need some great Idea. This is entirely new for Russia; it's unprecedented in Russian literature. At heart, we're built for war. We were always either fighting or preparing to fight. We've never known anything else - hence our wartime psychology. Even in civilian life, everything was always militarized. The drums were beating, the banners flying, our hearts leaping out of our chests. People didn't recognize their own slavery - they even liked being slaves. I ~ Svetlana Alexievich

I'm bad at relationships--I'm not gonna lie. And maybe you and I would be a mistake, but maybe we wouldn't. All I know is that if we don't try, we'll never know. ~ Karyn Bosnak

As it is not a settled question, you must clear your mind of the fancy with
which we all begin as children, that the institutions under which we live,
including our legal ways of distributing income and allowing people to own things, are natural, like the weather. They are not. Because they exist everywhere in our little world, we take it for granted that they have always existed and must always exist, and that they are self-acting. That is a dangerous mistake. They are in fact transient makeshifts; and many of them would not be obeyed, even by well-meaning people, if there were not a policeman within call and a prison within reach. They are being changed continually by Parliament, because we are never satisfied with them.... At the elections some candidates get votes by promising to make new laws or to get rid of old ones, and others by promising to keep things just as they are. This is impossible. Things will not stay as they are.

Changes that nobody ever believed possible take place in a few generations. Children nowadays think that spending nine years in school, oldage and widows' pensions, votes for women, and short-skirted ladies in Parliament or pleading in barristers' wigs in the courts are part of the order of Nature, and always were and ever shall be; but their great-grandmothers would have set down anyone who told them that such things were coming as mad, and anyone who wanted them to come as wicked. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I was, but then I realized that I was holding on to something that didn't exist anymore. That the person I missed didn't exist anymore. People change. The things we like and dislike change. And we can wish they couldn't all day long but that never works. ~ Sarah Ockler

How complex, untrustworthy, and important our stories are. We will never tell you the true story of our lives. ~ Andy Quan

We do not know our fate. This may be a forever goodbye; it may only be for years. My love for you will never waver, however long or however far. ~ Laila Ibrahim

It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It does wonders for my own psyche to turn envy into inspiration. No matter how successful we become, we're never above that. ~ Hillman Curtis

Tell me it's never been done. Because the only real laws in this world-the only things we really know-are the two postulates of relativity, the three laws of Newton, the four laws of thermodynamics, and Maxwell's equation-no, scratch that, the only things we really know are Maxwell's equations, the three laws of Newton, the two postulates of relativity, and the periodic table. That's all we know that's true. All the rest are man's laws ~ Dean Kamen

Yeah, let's get John here. That way we can stall for a while longer. We can keep on doing nothing for just a little while longer."
Albert said, "Take it easy, Howard."
"Take it easy?" Howard jumped to his feet. "Yeah? Where were you last night, Albert? Huh? Because I didn't see you out there on the street listening to kids screaming, seeing kids running around hurt and scared and choking, and Edilio and Orc struggling, and Dekka hacking up her lungs and Jack crying and…
"You know who couldn't even take it?" Howard raged. "You know who couldn't even take what was happening? Orc. Orc, who's not scared of anything. Orc, who everyone thinks is some kind of monster. He couldn't take it. He couldn't…but he did. And where were you, Albert? Counting your money? How about you, Astrid? Praying to Jesus?"
Astrid's throat tightened. She couldn't breathe. For a moment panic threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to run from the room, run away and never look back.
Edilio got to his feet and put an arm around Howard. Howard allowed it, and then he did something Astrid never thought she would see. Howard buried his face in Edilio's shoulder and cried, racking sobs.
"We're falling apart," Astrid whispered for herself alone.
But there was no easy escape. Everything Howard had said was true. She could see the truth reflected in Albert's stunned expression. The two of them, the smart ones, the clever ones, the great defenders of truth and fairness and justice, ~ Michael Grant

We never set eyes on Fatima or our dog or the city we had known ever again. Like a body prematurely buried, unmourned withpot coffin or ceremony, our hasty untidy exit from Jerusalem was no way to have said goodbye to our home, our country and all that we knew and loved. ~ Ghada Karmi

[My father ] came home from World War II and he voted for [Dwight] Eisenhower. He was pretty thoughtful about those things, but never, as I said, ever campaigned for anybody. He let me put a [Barry] Goldwater sticker on his pickup truck, but he never put a bumper sticker on his car. We never had a yard sign or anything in our yards, never contributed to anybody's campaign. ~ Jeff Sessions

And we took off-whoosh-into the night. Through the clouds, we hurtled up into the sky. And this man farted. I will never forget it as long as I live. Not only was it the worst fart, it was the longest. Maybe, it was the position he was in, he had squeezed his ass all up. But he was kinda leanin over and pointing his ass up toward me. And it made the strangest noise. It was like cloth tearing. ~ Billy Connolly

In Texas, years ago, almost all of the oil came from surface operations. Then someone got the idea that there were greater sources of supply deeper down. A well was drilled five thousand feet deep. The result? A gusher. Too many of us operate on the surface. We never go deep enough to find supernatural resources. The result is, we never operate at our best. More time and investment is involved to go deep but a gusher will pay off. ~ Alfred Armand Montapert

It is a good life we lead, brother,' said Federico with uncharacteristic solemnity.
'The best,' Ezio agreed.'And may it never change.'
They both paused - neither wishing to break the perfection of the moment - but after a while Federico quietly spoke.'May it never change us either, fratellino. ~ Oliver Bowden

We kept moving forward and didn't try to recreate the past .. the approach to each album was radically different every time. Many bands would have some success and, because they were locked into having a single - something we didn't have to worry about - they had to make sure there was something similar on the next album ... that was never the idea with Led Zeppelin .. the goal was to keep that spark of spontaneity at all times ... ~ Jimmy Page

I resolved, then, deep in my soul never to let him go. I'd be the one never to leave him. I'd prove to him that some things could be for always- that we could be. ~ Ann Aguirre

That we suffer so much today under whatsoever flag we live is proof positive that constitutions and laws, when framed by the early advocates of human liberty, never included and were never intended for us as a people. It is only a question of sheer accident that we happen to be fellow citizens today with the descendants of those who, through their advocacy, laid the foundation for human rights. ~ Marcus Garvey

Love cannot exorcise the gifts of hate. / Hate cannot exorcize what has no weight, / But laughter we can never over-rate. ~ May Sarton

Standing alone at the railing is Four. Though he's not an initiate anymore, most of the Dauntless use this day to come together with their families. Either his family doesn't like to come together, or he wasn't originally a Dauntless. Which faction could he have come from? "There's one of my instructors." I lean closer to say. "He's kind of intimidating." "He's handsome," she says. I find myself nodding without thinking. She laughs and lifts her arm from my shoulders. I want to steer her away from him, but just as I'm about to suggest that we go somewhere else, he looks over his shoulder. His eyes widen at the sight of my mother. She offers him her hand. "Hello. My name is Natalie," she says. "I'm Beatrice's mother." I have never seen my mother shake hands with someone. Four eases his hand into hers, looking stiff, and shakes it twice. The gesture looks unnatural for both of them. No, Four was not originally Dauntless if he doesn't shake hands easily. ~ Veronica Roth

- and I say you still haven't answered my question, Father Bleu."
"Haven't I, dear lady? I thought I stated that death is merely the beginning of - "
"No, no, no!" Her voice was as high as a harpy's. "Don't go all gooey and metaphysical. I mean to ask, what is death the act, the situation, the moment?"
She watched him foxily. The priest in turn struggled to remain polite. "Madame, I'm not positive I follow."
"Let me say it another way. Most people are afraid of dying, yes?"
"I disagree. Not those who find mystical union with the body of Christ in - "
"Oh, come off it!" Madame Kagle shrilled. "People are frightened of it, Father Bleu. Frightened and screaming their fear silently every hour of every day they live. Now I put it to you. Of what are they afraid? Are they afraid of the end of consciousness? The ultimate blackout, so to speak? Or are they afraid of another aspect of death? The one which they can't begin to foresee or understand?"
"What aspect is that, Madame Kagle?"
"The pain." She glared. "The pain, Father. Possibly sudden. Possibly horrible. Waiting, always waiting somewhere ahead, at an unguessable junction of time and place. Like that bootboy tonight. How it must have hurt. One blinding instant when his head hit, eh? I suggest, Father Bleu, that is what we're afraid of, that is the wholly unknowable part of dying - the screaming, hurting how, of which the when is only a lesser part. The how is the part we never know. Unle ~ John Jakes

I wanted to putt my hand on this hand and hold it still under mine, made still by his made still. Oh he was bright and I was dark and I gave him all my darkness on that ship; but we joined, for all good things in the world, and to find somethin together; and loved, I never knew I could do it and was afraid; and on the bow of the ship that night that he said, "What have we done Christy?"
I said, wonderin too, "But somethin good will come of this, I know somethin good will come of this ... "
Only sorrow came. ~ William Goyen