„Zkušenost není to, co se vám stane. Zkušenost je to, jak naložíte s tím, co se vám stalo.“

Originál

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

Texts and Pretexts (1932), p. 5
Zdroj: Texts & Pretexts: An Anthology With Commentaries
Kontext: The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials — in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves. By a happy dispensation of nature, the poet generally possesses the gift of experience in conjunction with that of expression.