It is true that "Not everything that is learned is contained in books." A person
can learn a lot and retain what he learns through experience. In my opinion
life's valuable lessons are learnt from experience and so the knowledge gained
from experience is more important.
Books are a great source of information. A person in his lifetime cannot
experience everything, but by reading a book on a particular subject he can gain
knowledge over that subject in less time. There are books available on any
subject that one needs. However experience seems more important to me.
Suppose a person living in the United States wants to learn about India. He has
two options: he could visit India and learn about the people and places there or
he could just pick up a book about India and read it. The first option will be
expensive and time consuming, but at the same time it gives one first hand
information and a sense of satisfaction while the second option is less
expensive and saves time.
A person can gain knowledge and learn many valuable lessons through his/her
own practical experiences and also the experiences of others. The knowledge
learnt from experience is very likely to be retained in our memory for a long
period of time. The conclusions that we draw from what we learn would be
from our practical experience instead of accepting the conclusion drawn in the
book by the author.
So in my opinion knowledge can be gained both by reading books and by
experience but the knowledge gained through experience is more important.