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  ... But it is wrong that any of these climbers should kick the ladder by which they have climbed. But indeed these bitter people who record their experiences really record their lack of experiences. It is the countryman who has not succeeded in being a countryman who comes up to London. It is the clerk who has not succeeded in being a clerk who tries (on vegetarian principles) to be a countryman. And the woman with a past is generally a woman angry about the past she never had. When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.  

THE ANGRY AUTHOR: HIS FAREWELL
I have republished all these old articles of mine because they cover a very controversial period, in which I was in nearly all the controversies, whether I was visible there or no. And I wish to gather up into this last article a valedictory violence about all such things; and then pass to where, beyond these voices, there is peace--or in other words, to the writing of Penny Dreadfuls; a noble and much-needed work. But before I finally desert...   Chesterton, Gilbert K.

Excerpt from A Miscellany of Men · This quote is tagged Experience · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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