William Alexander Percy Quotes

Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.

Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.

I like the idea of finding parts that I know I can do but I don't totally understand them right away.

I didn't learn stories, I just absorbed them.

Nothing said to us, nothing we can learn from others, reaches us so deep as that which we find in ourselves.

Most of the time we do not know what we have learned till long after we learned it.

All learning is in the learner, not in the teacher.

I have learned to feel my way through life, personally and professionally.

The most important thing to me is, how, in the process of learning how to use my body, can I come to understand myself ?

Sometimes, the experiences that tell you what you don't want to do are as important as those that tell you what you do want to do.

All you have to do is to pay attention; lessons always arrive when you are ready, and if you can read the signs, you will learn everything you need to know in order to take the next step

Error is just as important a condition of life's progress as truth

Education is what remains when what is learned has been taken away.

I probably need another couple of years of absorbing that and really looking at it to be able to do it because you actually have to know everybody's job and I don't know everybody's job yet. I'm just now comfortable with my own.

My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.

What’s most important is what you can’t see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so. That’s the feeling I have, as someone who’s felt this, who’s experienced it.

Trust is a skill learned over time so that, like a well-trained athlete, one makes the right moves, usually without much reflection.

Slowly but surely I have been soaking Rilke up these last few months: the man, his work and his life. And that is probably the only right way with literature, with study, with people or with anything else: to let it all soak in, to let it all mature slowly inside you until it has become a part of yourself. That, too, is a growing process. Everything is a growing process. And in between, emotions and sensations that strike you like lightning. But still the most important thing is the organic process of growing.

Successes teach you nothing. Failures teach you everything. Making mistakes is the most important thing you can do.

I'm not comfortable with words. I love images ,and I love sounds, and I love feelings. I like the idea of intuition. I think a lot of things in life are understood that way. But you internalize these things; they don't really pop out. Certain things are built inside - little areas of understanding. I feel that I live in darkness and confusion, and I'm trying, like we all are, to make some sort of sense of it.

I do take defeats well. However, I don't just leave them at that. I take time to analyze why I was defeated and make sure I don't make the same mistakes again. I think it is important to learn from one's mistakes.

Is it more important that you, as a white male, read my work and learn from it, or what you call me? I think it's more important that you read my work, reflect on it, and allow it to transform your life and your thinking in some way.

Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone; learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use.

It's like any other job: there's a method to it and it's really important to get that down. I'm still working on it, I got a lot to learn. It's one thing to make records but it's a whole 'nother capacity to be a star - whatever that is.

But I know what's important to me, and what isn't. And I think I know what people can get used to, and what they can even learn to like. (It just takes some people longer than others. :-)