Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.
Interpretation
The value lies in the experiences we have rather than the outcomes they produce.
Walter Pater's quote emphasizes that the essence of life is found in the experiences we acquire along the way, rather than solely focusing on the results or achievements that those experiences yield. It suggests that the journey and the learning from each moment are more significant than the final product or 'fruit' of our efforts.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth.
To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life . . . Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end . . . For art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.
Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.
Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world.
A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, which ponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developed consciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry.
Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.
At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action.
The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.
Write about the emotions you fear the most.
God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed.
Fits of depression come over the most of us. Usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy.
In the end, The treasure of life is missed by those who hold on and gained by those who let go
Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don't see what goes on underground - as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don't see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.
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