Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
A child reflects on how hard it was to clean up a mess they made.
In plain terms
Being messy is harder work than it looks, taking hours to fix.
What can you take from it?
Cleaning up mistakes takes more effort than making them.

Where it applies

  • childhood
  • household tasks

Putting it to work

  • tidy up immediately
  • avoid messes

Questions to consider

  • How much work did your mess cause?
  • Would you do it differently?

Another view

Not all mistakes require hours of cleanup.

More from Orson Scott Card

  1. How is it possible that stupidity should end our lives when our enemies' cleverest stratagems had not

    Permalink to quote #760
  2. Some people called it 'The time of undoing; ' some, wishing to be more positive, spoke of it as 'The replanting' or 'The restoring' or even 'The resurrection' …

    Permalink to quote #762
  3. At last I was able to explain that I hadn't understood the implications of my statement in their language, that I was transliterating and certain words had dif…

    Permalink to quote #759

Related quotes

  1. Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.

    Malcolm ForbesMalcolm Forbes quote #1
  2. It's fascinating to watch a show develop from a script to a 22-minute comedy. I try to learn as much, and ask as many questions, as I can without being annoyin…

    Joseph Gordon LevittJoseph Gordon Levitt quote #1
  3. I believe in the ability of focusing strongly in something, then you are able to extract even more out of it. It's been like this all my life, and it's been on…

    Ayrton SennaAyrton Senna quote #4