The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.
Anna QuindlenRead
Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that children are the ultimate positive outcome of one's past experiences, making it impossible to feel regret.
In this quote, Anna Quindlen reflects on the profound impact that children have on their parents' lives, suggesting that despite any mistakes or regrets in the past, the joys and fulfillment that come from raising children outweigh any negative feelings. The phrase 'finest fruits' symbolizes the positive achievements that emerge from life's journey, emphasizing that children can transform past regrets into cherished blessings.
Themes
ChildrenRegretPastFamilyBlessings
In practice
Example use cases
In a family reunion speech, you can express gratitude for the joy children bring, using this quote.
More from Anna Quindlen
All quotes βThe future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.
Anna QuindlenRead
I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
Anna QuindlenRead
With reference to the younger generation..."If the experience of their exhausted, insomniac, dispirited elders makes them decide they'd prefer not to go straight from the classroom to the cubicle to the coffin, it doesn't mean they're lazy. It means they're sane."
Anna QuindlenRead
Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.
Anna QuindlenRead
I conveniently forgot to remember that people only have two hands, or, as another parent once said of having a third child, it's time for a zone defense instead of man-to-man.
Anna QuindlenRead
Similar quotes
My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, 'You're tearing up the grass'; 'We're not raising grass,' Dad would reply. 'We're raising boys.'
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I love my kids as individuals, not as a herd, and I do have a herd of children: I have seven kids.
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A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.
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I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless. They crash . . . you add a longer tail . . . you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they'll fly.
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It all starts with the script: it's not worth taking myself away from my family if I don't have something I'm really passionate about.
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My dad woke up at 5:30 every morning - every single day - and drove an hour-and-a-half to work. My mom was constantly working odd jobs, whether it was at Sizzler or babysitting. I didn't realize how hard they worked. Most kids rarely do. But they were building something for us.
Diana TaurasiRead