Other related topics at: Project Steps 12. Disappointment; Evaluation; Experience; Learning; Reality "I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed." Johnson: Letter to Bennet Langton Link 1,659. Evaluation "As man is a being very sparingly furnished with the power of prescience, he can provide for the future only by considering the past; and as futurity is all in which he has any real interest, he ought very diligently to use the only means by which he can be enabled to enjoy it, and frequently tp revolve the experiments which he has hitherto made upon life, that he may gain wisdom from his mistakes, and caution from his miscarriages." Johnson: Adventurer #137 (February 26, 1754) Link 1,823. Disappointment; Evaluation; Expectations; Old Age; Satisfaction "He that in the latter part of his life too strictly inquires what he has done, can very seldom receive from his own heart such an account as will give him satisfaction." Johnson: Idler #88 (December 22, 1759) Link