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About this quote

What does it mean?
Optimism should be lowered to expecting to be slightly worse at the end than the beginning.
In plain terms
The best hope is simply to be slightly less than you started.
What can you take from it?
Accept being a bit broken at the end.

Where it applies

  • aging
  • grief
  • self-acceptance

Putting it to work

  • lowering expectations
  • self-compassion
  • reality checks

Questions to consider

  • What is your best hope for the end?
  • Do you expect to be better or worse?

Another view

It dismisses the possibility of genuine growth.

More from Samuel Beckett

  1. And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are …

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  2. My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes …

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  3. To him who has nothing it is forbidden not to relish filth.

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