Meaning of “Always have we been our own forerunners, and…”

The Analects of Confucius, James Legge’s public-domain English translation; Book XV contrasts inward self-examination with dependence on others.

As You Like It, Act II, Scene 1, Duke Senior; 1919 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Jack R. Crawford, printed page 24 / Wikisource scan leaf 36. “Sweet are the uses of adversity” occurs in Duke Senior’s Forest of Arden reflection on exile, winter and the lessons he claims to find outside court life. It remains fictional dramatic speech rather than Shakespeare’s autobiographical advice or a modern psychological claim about hardship.

An Essay on Criticism, Part III; Pope joins good nature and good sense before contrasting ordinary human error with the higher moral act of forgiveness.

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5; Ophelia speaks during her disrupted state, so the line remains dramatic dialogue rather than Shakespearean autobiography.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Proverbs of Hell”; Blake presents the line as a deliberately paradoxical aphorism about experience and limits.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Chapter 4; third-person narration focalized through Lord Henry reflects that experience is the name people give to their mistakes.