Quote of the Day: George Herbert on Life & Wisdom

If you’ve been waiting for a sign to start your next chapter, let this insight from George Herbert be the permission you need: “Living well is the best revenge.”

“Living well” can sound like manners or image management. But Herbert is pointing to something more muscular: a tactical withdrawal that still lands a punch. When someone has wronged you, they often want a reaction, proof they got under your skin, evidence they can still steer your mood. Living well refuses to hand them the wheel. It reroutes the urge for payback away from spectacle and toward outcomes: steady health, clean work, honest friendships, and a life that keeps widening.

This is not the denial of anger; it’s the discipline of self-rule. Revenge keeps the offender in the center of your story, as if your days must orbit their mistake. Living well demotes them to a footnote. The quiet humiliation, if you want to call it that, is that you become unbothered and, crucially, flourishing. You don’t need to win the argument. You need to win back your attention, and invest it in resilience you can measure: sleep, skill, savings, strength, service.

George Herbert, an influential English poet and Anglican cleric, built a body of devotional poetry that treats the inner life as serious work, where character is forged not by grand statements, but by daily choices that can survive both social and spiritual scrutiny.

Today, choose one concrete upgrade that your resentment has been postponing: send the email you’ve been avoiding, take a 20-minute walk, or do one focused hour on the craft that will outlast the drama. Make it so your life answers the insult with agency. Go live so well that your future feels like a clean room, and may your steps be light as you leave the old story behind.