Life & Wisdom Quote by Evelyn Underhill

Underhill’s line is spiritual tough love disguised as simple time management. She treats “thinking” as a moral economy: attention is a currency, and obsessing over “evil” is not penitence but a kind of self-indulgence. The opening clause is almost painfully practical - every minute spent rehearsing darkness is a minute not spent practicing light. It’s an argument aimed at the scrupulous and the self-loathing alike, people who confuse rumination with responsibility.

The subtext is a rebuke to a very modern temptation: turning our worst moments into a private drama where we get to play both villain and judge. “Morbid interest in your own misdeeds” skewers that narcissistic loop. Underhill isn’t minimizing wrongdoing; she’s warning that shame can become a performance that keeps you at the center of the story. The spiritual move is decentering: less autobiography, more repair.

Context matters. Writing in the early 20th century, Underhill was a prominent Christian mystic and interpreter of inner life, pushing back against a culture strained by industrial modernity and, later, war - conditions that fed anxiety, guilt, and a craving for extreme emotional states. Her counsel is anti-sensational: refuse to “pander,” as if the psyche were a tabloid editor hungry for grim copy.

The rhythm of the ending does the real work. “Pick yourself up” and “shake yourself” are bodily verbs; she drags repentance out of the mind and back into action. Be sorry, yes - but don’t make sorrow your home address. Go on again.