Source identified
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
The verse places change inside a larger rhythm of seasons and purposes, making it useful for thinking about acceptance when one phase of life gives way to another.
Source note: Ecclesiastes 3:1 in the King James Version, opening the sequence of contrasting times and seasons.
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“Sweet are the uses of adversity.”
Voice: Fictional character · Duke Senior
Adversity is presented as capable of yielding insight or value even when the experience itself is unwelcome.
Source note: As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 1; Duke Senior reflects on what adversity can reveal while living in exile.
Source identified
“Customs are not to be changed but for better.”
The maxim sets a burden on reform: novelty alone is not enough; a proposed change should be able to show a practical or rational advantage.
Source note: The Idler, No. 90; Johnson is discussing gesture and public speaking, not asserting that every inherited custom should remain untouched.
Source identified
“an intelligent producer as well as a consumer.”
Washington argues that post-emancipation advancement requires access to skills and productive economic roles, not consumption or formal status alone.
Source note: The Future of the American Negro, Chapter III; Project Gutenberg #26507. This is a deliberately short excerpt from Washington’s 1899 argument about becoming a producer as well as a consumer; historical racial context is retained in the source note.
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“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
Voice: Narrator voice · Narrator, focalized through Lord Henry
The wit turns “experience” into a retrospective label for errors, suggesting that mistakes become useful only when understood.
Source note: 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.
Source identified
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.”
Failure can expose what does not work and force closer observation, turning setbacks into information that uncomplicated success may never reveal.
Source note: Self-Help, Chapter XI, “Self-Culture—Facilities and Difficulties,” Project Gutenberg #935. The passage follows Charles James Fox’s contrast between early success and perseverance after failure, then leads into examples of discoveries and learning produced through mistakes and failed attempts.