160 Experience Quotes for Living a Fulfilled Life
Experience is something only gained through life.
These experience quotes will open your eyes to what the meaning of life might truly be: to live.
When we live a full life, we will be able to gain success in self-development, in career, and in learning.
What is there to be learned from life’s experiences?
As these experience quotes will show you, life is about, well, allowing it to happen, and then allowing yourself to learn from the events that have happened to you.
You simply cannot develop as a human being without experience, as that is the only way to grow—through pain, through learning, and through struggles, as well as through love, happiness, and pleasure.
These things make us human, and it’s our humanity that allows us to pass our experiences on so that others may learn from them.
Below is our collection of inspirational, wise, and thought-provoking experience quotes, sayings, and proverbs, collected from a variety of sources over the years.
Don’t forget to also read these Dave Ramsey quotes for living successfully.
If you enjoy this article, check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily motivation.
Browse our entire collection of inspirational quotes for more motivating ideas and concepts.
Experience Quotes About the Adventure of Life
1. “The easiest way to be reborn is to live and feel life every day.” – Munia Khan
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2. “Life is about experience… you can’t hold onto everything.” – Sarah Addison Allen
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3. “Sometimes the only way to ever find yourself is to get completely lost.” -Kellie Elmore
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4. “I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.” -Thomas Carlyle
5. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” – Mae West
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6. “Life is just like a voyage where the waves of time push us forward.” -Abrar Ahmed Chowdhury
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7. “We are all rich and ignore the buried fact of accumulated wisdom.” -Ray Bradbury
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8. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker
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9. “If you don’t feel it, flee from it. Go where you are celebrated, not merely tolerated.” – Paul F Davis
10. “Find out what you like doing best, and get someone to pay you for doing it.” – Katherine Whitehorn
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11. “How would your life be different if… you decided to give freely, love fully, and play feverously? Let today be the day… you free yourself from the conditioned rules that limit your happiness and dilute the beautiful life experience. Have fun. Give—Love—Play!” – Steve Maraboli
12. “The formula of life is simple. It is the formula of giving—giving courage, attention, peace, love and comfort to yourself and the society.” -Amit Ray
13. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children or men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.” – Helen Keller
14. “The circumstances surrounding your birth is not as important as the opportunity to live life.” – Lailah Gifty Akita
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Experience Quotes About Learning from Life
15. “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Gustav Jung
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16. “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
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17. “Good judgement comes from bad experience. Unfortunately, most of that comes from bad judgement.” – Jill Shalvis
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18. “Life has a meaning but no not set out to find out. Just live it out.” -Bangambiki Habyarimana
19. “Life is a tapestry woven by the decisions we make.” – Serrilyn Kenyon
20. “The price of a memory, is the memory of the sorrow it brings.” – Pittacus Lore
21. “Sometimes it’s the mistakes that turn out to be the best parts of life.” -Carrie Ryan
22. “Whatever life throws at me, I’ll take with a smile upon my face and Nirvana’s ‘Bleach’ on the stereo.” – Mark R. Faulkner
23. “I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay
24. “Life isn’t sure, life is scary, it doesn’t mean you stop living it.” – Susan May Warren
25. “My burden is my purpose. Without it, I wouldn’t be.” – Solange Nicole
26. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
27. “The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of life, the clearer we should see through it.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
28. “Life is spectacular. Forget the dark things. Take a drink and let time wash them away to where ever time washes away to.” – Tim Tharp
29. “Wisdom is the reward for surviving our own stupidity.” – Brian Rathbone
30. “If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.” – Kazuo Ishiguro
31. “I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chatted all the way; But left me none the wiser for all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow; And ne’er a word said she; But, oh! The things I learned from her, when Sorrow walked with me.” – Robert Browning Hamilton
Experience Quotes About Career
32. “A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.” – Stephen King
33. “All your life you’re yellow. Then one day, you brush up against something blue, the barest touch, and voila, the rest of your life you’re green.” – Tess Callahan
34. “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – TS Eliot
35. “One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.” – Frank Herbert
36. “Love, like everything else in life, should be a discovery, an adventure, and like most adventures, you don’t know you’re having one until you’re right in the middle of it.” – EA Bucchianeri
37. “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle
38. “The future depends on what you do today.” – Mahatma Gandhi
39. “Write your own book instead of reading someone else’s book about success.” – Herb Brooks
40. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” – Stephen Covey
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Experience Quotes About Being Human
41. “Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it… don’t allow his anger to become your anger.” – Bohdi Sanders
42. “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” – William Blake
43. “Focus on making yourself better, not on thinking that you are better.” -Bohdi Sanders
44. “Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.” – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
45. “I can’t tell if she’s actually real, or if she’s stopped caring if she’s real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?” – Jennifer Egan
46. “Not feeling is no replacement for reality. Your problems today are still your problems tomorrow.” – Larry Michael Dredla
47. “I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn’t know anything for a long time.” – Laurell K Hamilton
48. “Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.” – Barbara Kingsolver
49. “A mature soul filled with scars of life experiences.” – Toba Beta
50. “I quite enjoy the lines on my forehead because they show my life. That’s my history and I like to see that in other people. Like this wrinkle is due to some girl who broke my heart. I don’t want to escape it in any way.” -Michael Fassbender
51. “Old folks live on memory, young folks live on hope.” – Gayla Reid
More experience quotes and sayings
52. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” – Oprah Winfrey
53. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” – Truman Capote
54. “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
55. The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.” – Thomas Paine
56. “People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.” – Paulo Coelho
57. “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.” – Randy Pausch
58. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” – Aldous Huxley
59. “A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out.” – Lemony Snicket
60. “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey
61. “You need to screw up to learn. You need to experience to create greatness.” – Laurie Faria Stolarz
Experience quotes for when life feels hard
62. “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
63. “We learn from failure, not from success!” -Bram Stoker
64. “Be thankful for everything that happens in your life; it’s all an experience.” -Roy T. Bennett
65. “Nothing ever becomes real ’til it is experienced.” -John Keats
66. “To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
To gain all while you give,
To roam the roads of lands remote,
To travel is to live.”
― Hans Christian Andersen
67. “Some things cannot be taught; they must be experienced. You never learn the most valuable lessons in life until you go through your own journey.” -Roy T. Bennett
68. “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility.” -Orson F. Whitney
69. “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it.” -C.S. Lewis
70. “If we can just let go and trust that things will work out they way they’re supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself.” -Goldie Hawn
71. “By seeking and blundering we learn.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Inspirational Experience Quotes
72. “If we all lived as if we had one month left on this earth, we would each spend our days differently, in ways unique to us, and yet I believe we would all experience more fulfilling lives that could leave a legacy for eternity.” – Kerry Shook
73. “Experience and recognize your own betrayal of self. Change sides and work for self against ego. There is no middle. There is no neutral. There is no pleasing both. Any illusions of middle, neutral, or pleasing both means you are serving ego.” – Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
74. “I notice that the more I reflect on the reasons I am thankful, the more appreciation and joy I experience.” – Krystal Kuehn
75. “If you are candid, you will discover that each experience in your life was absolutely necessary in order to have gotten you to the next place, and the next, up until this very moment.” – Wayne Dyer
76. “Success is a subjective term. … Everyone has their own definition of the word, which stems from our tastes, feelings, and life experiences.” – Jason Navallo
77. “True forgiveness is when you can say, “Thank you for that experience.” – Oprah Winfrey
78. “The major problem is that we tend to live our life in our head, in our thoughts and stories, cut off from our actual experience.” – Michael Smith
79. “Through making images and objects it is possible to externalise and objectify experience so that it becomes possible to reflect upon it.” – David Edwards
80. “Experiencing the state of Wonder shifted things in a powerful way and was also a genuine experience that raised her up without being in conflict with the genuine expression of her emotions.” – Alain Herriott
81. “View life as a continuous learning experience.” – Denis Waitley
Experience Quotes That We Learn Through Experiences
82. “Success is simply being on your path. Only through experience can we expand beyond our limited bee perspective and start to see the larger picture of things.” ― John Penberthy
83. “Experience has been a stern but excellent teacher.” ― Og Mandino
84. “One of the downfalls people who encounter financial success experience is not knowing what to do with the excess money they have.” ― Devan Skywisdom
85. “Simple changes to your perspective and thought processes can have huge effects on your stress levels and experience of life.” ― Nathalie Thompson
86. “I guess the more I have done, the less fearful I have become, because experience has taught me that the worst case is rarely likely to occur.” ― Tony Clark
87. “We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.” ― Kahlil Gibran
88. “Don’t worry about your past failures; just chalk them up to learning experiences and move on. You see, we cannot live in the past; however, we must learn from the past.” ― David DeNotaris
89. “Research into happiness suggests that a planned pleasant experience is more enjoyable than acquiring a physical object.” ― Jenny Rogers
90. “Every experience that you have is simply one moment in time. Every moment that you struggle within, sit with, or dance your way through will eventually pass.” ― Cyndie Spiegel
91. “You have to be willing to experience yourself, to know your own instincts and needs, to be guided by the natural course of your life, with love and grace and peace of mind.” ― Lana Bordelstein
Experience Quotes To Learn From Each Moment
92. “The best ideas are the honest ones. Ones born out of personal experience. Ones that originated to help a few but ended up helping many.” — Simon Sinek
93. “Nothing goes to waste on the journey of life. Both good and bad experiences shape your mind and heart for what is to come.” — Leon Brown
94. “Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.” — Hal Borland
95. There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.” — John Stuart Mill
96. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” — Soren Kierkegaard
97. “Life is a daily cleansing. Negativity must be washed away, if you wish to attract positive experiences to your life.” — Leon Brown
98. “Every moment is an experience.” — Jake Roberts
99. “Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace & gratitude.” — Denis Waitley
100. No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.” — Paulo Freire
101. “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.” — David A. Kolb
Experience Quotes To Enrich Your Life
102. “Our time here on Earth is a learning experience and no one is exempt!” — Angela Agranoff
103. “Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.” — Victoria Holt
104. “To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.” — Saint Teresa of Avila
105. “Most of us become more conscientious, confident, caring, and calm with life experience.” — Angela Duckworth
106. “My inspiration comes from my real life experiences.” — Lilly Singh
107. “The only source of knowledge is experience.” — Albert Einstein
108. “Experience takes dreadfully high school-wages, but he teaches like no other.” — Thomas Carlyle
109. “Every experience in your life is being orchestrated to teach you something you need to know to move forward.” —Brian Tracy
110. “The most valuable lessons in life cannot be taught, they must be experienced.” — Liam Payne
111. “No one ever got good at anything by just reading a book about it. Real skill and improvement come from experience.” — Justin Hammond
Thought Provoking Experience Quotes To Understand Things Better
112. “Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience.” ― Samuel Smiles
113. “Experience is a grindstone and it is lucky for us if we get brightened by it— not ground.” ― Josh Billings
114. “You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.” ― Albert Camus
115. “Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience. There is no other way to know.” ― Vivekananda
116. “I was told by a very smart man a long time ago that talent always beats experience. Because by the time you get experience, the talent’s gone.” ― Pat Corrales
117. “The pilgrims didn’t have any experience when they first arrived here. Hell, if experience was that important, we’d never have had anybody walking on the moon.” ― Doug Rader
118. “Experience is a dim lamp which only lights the one who bears it.” ― Louis Celine
119. “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lessons afterward.” ― Vernon Law
120. “Experience teaches only the teachable.” ― Huxley
121. “But all theory must lead to experience, and every constitution has its own laws.” ― Thomas Jefferson
Embrace Life’s Journey with These Inspiring Experience Quotes
122. “Experience fails to teach where there is no desire to learn.” ― George Bernard Shaw
123. “Outside our comfort zone, though, is where we experience the true awesomeness of God.” ― Lysa TerKeurst
124. “Our past experiences may have made us the way we are, but we don’t have to stay that way.” ― Joyce Meyer
125. Everything in your life, every experience, every relationship is a mirror of the mental pattern that is going on inside of you.” ― Louise Hay
126. “It’s okay to learn from every experience, and it’s okay to make mistakes.” ― Louise Hay
127. “Everything I experience influences everything I do.” ― Mandy Patinkin
128. “Life experience is not something to be denied, but to be celebrated.” ― Madeleine M. Kunin
129. Every experience empowers you twice: First when you enter into it with a whole heart, and again when you leave it with a whole heart.” ― Alan Cohen
130. “Bitter experience has taught us how fundamental our values are and how great the mission they represent.” ― Jan Peter Balkenende
131. “Experience increases our wisdom but doesn’t reduce our follies.” ― Josh Billings
Wisdom and Inspiration from Experience Quotes
131. “We know nothing of what will happen in future, but by the analogy of experience.” ― Abraham Lincoln
132. “In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.” ― Quintilian
133. “Experience is a safe guide.” ― William Penn
134. “Take control of your consistent emotions and begin to consciously and deliberately reshape your daily experience of life.” ― Tony Robbins
135. “I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.” ― Lou Holtz
136. “We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.” ― T. S. Eliot
137. “Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.” ― James A. Baldwin
138. “Experience alone can give, even to the greatest talent, that confidence in having done all that could be done.” ― Eugene Delacroix
139. “With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.” ― Oprah Winfrey
140. “The experience of others adds to our knowledge, but not to our wisdom; that is dearer bought.” ― Hosea Ballou
Exploring the Depth of Experience Quotes in Everyday Life
141. “Experience is how life catches up with us and teaches us to love and forgive each other.” ― Judy Collins
142. “Life should serve up its feast of experience in a series of courses.” ― William Golding
143. “You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.” ― William James
144. “There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.” ― Josh Billings
145. “My works are the issue of simple and plain experience which is the true mistress.” ― Leonardo da Vinci
146. “The strong experience of nature… is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of all future work.” ― Paul Cezanne
147. “Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices – just recognize them.” ― Edward R. Murrow
148. “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” ― C. S. Lewis
149. “My experiences have taught me a lot and I’m happy with my learnings, if not with what I went through to learn.” ― Ally Sheedy
150. “Experience isn’t interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.” ― Elizabeth Bowen
151. “Remember – our experience is not what happened to us but how we react to that happening.” — Rajneesh Chaturvedi
152. “When we put balance to work in each area of our lives, we truly experience greater balance, greater reward.” — Jeff Kooz
153. “When you fail at completing a project or experience any other type of failure, you should consider it a learning experience. You can learn and then move forward.” — Morris Pratt
154. “You are the controller of your mind and you can work to train your mind to keep a focus on the fun, happy and positive thoughts and feelings that you experience each day.” — Minka Ferguson
155. “High self-esteem doesn’t mean you won’t experience sadness or regret failure, but it will help you maintain an overall sense of self worth.” — Jewel McQuin
156. “You gain experience from failures.” — Catherine Pulsifer
157. “The next time you bring cup to lip, think about how you can best enjoy the experience. Enjoying coffee is more than a matter of taste. All five senses play an important part.” — Joe Siciliano
158. “Having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility.” — Olafur Eliasson
159. “The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.” — Elliot W. Eisner
160. “Don’t be afraid to speak from personal experience; in many ways, those vulnerable moments will be the key that unlocks a hardened heart.” — Luis Palau
What did you learn from these experience quotes?
Experience is the root of a fulfilled life.
The experience quotes above remind us to take past experiences and turn them into life lessons.
When we take our experiences and allow them to lead to wisdom, we will be able to grow in our lives and feel less stuck.
So, what is the best way to interpret our unique experiences?
Life experiences are simply lessons designed to help us grow into new versions of ourselves.
The best way to create a life we feel is important is to allow our experiences to build upon each other.
This way, we can keep changing, and keep creating better selves to learn from.
What’s your biggest takeaway from these experience quotes and sayings?
Do you have any other enlightening quotes to add?
Let us know in the comment section below.
