I wake to sleep

and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

T.Roethke. From The Waking.

These people

have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.

Anton Chekhov. A Day in the Country.

Among other things, you'll find

that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

J.D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye.