Life & Wisdom Quote by Oliver Herford

Herford takes a proverb that usually functions as a scold and tweaks it into a wink. The old warning - keep moving and you will never accumulate the “moss” of property, stability, reputation, maybe even wisdom - is still there, but he flips the moral center. Yes, motion prevents settling. But it also produces “a certain polish,” an earned sheen that comes only from contact, friction, and time.

The word “certain” matters. This isn’t a grand romantic defense of restlessness; it’s a dry, measured concession. Polish is surface-level, not the deep rooting moss implies. Herford is honest about the trade: the wanderer gets refinement, not necessarily nourishment. The stone becomes smoother, more presentable, more socially legible - less likely to snag or cling. That’s an urbane portrait of the modern individual: mobile, adaptable, maybe a bit worn down, but also worldly.

Context helps. Writing in the late Victorian to early modern period, Herford sits amid a culture where mobility is accelerating: cities swelling, careers unmooring from family land, travel and print creating new kinds of cosmopolitan identity. The proverb belonged to a rural ethic of staying put; Herford’s revision reads like a metropolitan counter-ethic. He’s not arguing that drifting is virtuous. He’s suggesting that the self we admire in modern life - smoothness, sophistication, charm - is often the byproduct of not staying long enough anywhere to grow moss.