You cannot go around and keep score. If you keep score on the good things and the bad things, you'll find out that you're a very miserable person. God gave man the ability to forget, which is one of the greatest attributes you have. Because if you remember everything that's happened to you, you generally remember that which is the most unfortunate.
Interpretation
Maintaining a tally of life's ups and downs can lead to misery; forgetting allows for a more positive existence.
This quote emphasizes the importance of not dwelling on past grievances or constantly measuring the good against the bad. By suggesting that remembering only the unfortunate events leads to unhappiness, it highlights man's ability to forget as a critical attribute that facilitates personal peace and emotional well-being.
In practice
During a motivational talk about resilience, one might say, 'Remember, you cannot go around and keep score.'
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Much of our American progress has been the product of the individual who had an idea; pursued it; fashioned it; tenaciously clung to it against all odds; and then produced it, sold it, and profited from it.
We need an America with the wisdom of experience. But we must not let America grow old in spirit.
Here we are the way politics ought to be in America; the politics of happiness, the politics of purpose and the politics of joy.
The pursuit of peace resembles the building of a great cathedral. It is the work of a generation. In concept it requires a mater-architect; in execution, the labors of many.
The President is the peoples lobbyist.
We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be.
Everything comes if a man will only wait.
All I can say is that it's amazing what you can accomplish when you're young and foolish.
This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practise As full of labour as a wise man's art For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.
I know that my books are worthy, which is separate from me.
I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.