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About this quote

What does it mean?
You are young now, so move on with life; rest later when you are dead.
In plain terms
Up and live now; sleep later when you are gone.
What can you take from it?
Live while you are alive; rest comes after death.

Where it applies

  • encouraging youth
  • grief
  • life advice

Putting it to work

  • live actively now
  • stop delaying joy

Questions to consider

  • How do you balance action and rest?
  • What advice would you give a young person?

Another view

It offers little comfort to those grieving a loss.

More from A. E. Housman

  1. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at thin…

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  2. Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

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  3. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.

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