Go forward with joyful confidence.
George EliotRead
Perhaps nothing ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the inevitability of mistakes and the importance of learning from them.
This quote by George Eliot suggests that life's experiences are often our greatest teachers, highlighting that the lessons we learn tend to come after the fact, when it's too late to change our past decisions. It emphasizes the idea that while we can strive to do better moving forward, some wrongs cannot be corrected, much like one cannot compensate for a subtraction with an addition; rather, we must accept the lessons life gives us and move on with understanding and growth.
Themes
LifeLessonsMistakesGrowthLearning
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about personal growth, one might reference this quote to emphasize the value of learning from our past.
More from George Eliot
All quotes →You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well.
George EliotRead
She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel – that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.
George EliotRead
Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
George EliotRead
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
George EliotRead
Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.
George EliotRead
Similar quotes
If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circustance.
Theodore DreiserRead
A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.
Freeman DysonRead
I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don't feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.
David BowieRead
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.
Henry David ThoreauRead
If even in science there is no a way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power.
Imre LakatosRead