Life is the only real ...

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
 Edith Wharton

More phrases

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Quotes from the same author

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
 Edith Wharton
If only wed stop trying to be happy wed have a pretty good time.
 Edith Wharton
...I have always lived on contrasts! To me the only death is monotony. Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.
 Edith Wharton
And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.
 Edith Wharton
I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it.
 Edith Wharton