He had in his Bronx apartment a lodger less learned than himself, and much fiercer in piety. One day when we were studying the laws of repentance together, the lodger burst from his room. "What! " he said. "The atheists guzzles his whiskey and eats pork and wallows with women all his life long, and then repents the day before he dies and stands guiltless? While I spend a lifetime trying to please God?" My grandfather pointed to the book. "So it is written, " he said gently.–" Written! " the lodger roared. "There are books and there are books." And he slammed back into his room. The lodger's outrage seemed highly logical. My grandfather pointed out afterward that cancelling the past does not turn it into a record of achievement. It leaves it blank, a waste of spilled years. A man had better return, he said, while time remains to write a life worth scanning. And since no man knows his death day, the time to get a grip on his life is the first hour when the impulse strikes him. Herman Wouk
About This Quote

When you go through a hard time, things don't always turn out the way you would have expected. But it doesn't mean you can't make a difference in your life as it is. Things will never turn as you hoped but as long as there is a chance to make them better, then you should take that chance.

Source: This Is My God: A Guidebook To Judaism

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