Time & Perspective Quote by Franklin P. Adams

A good body turns the calendar into propaganda. Franklin P. Adams’s line is funny because it smuggles a big, self-incriminating truth into a breezy seasonal cliché: the “best time of the year” isn’t really out there in the weather, the holidays, or the civic mood. It’s in your joints, your lungs, your sleep. When you’re well, every month can be framed as peak season; when you’re not, even June feels like late November.

The intent is less greeting-card than corrective. Adams, a newspaper wit who made a career out of puncturing public pretensions, takes aim at our habit of outsourcing happiness to the next external upgrade: the weekend, the vacation, the “fresh start” month. His subtext is almost rude in its simplicity: your experience of time is largely a health report. That’s why the phrasing “makes you feel” matters. Health isn’t declared; it’s perceived, and that perception edits reality in real time, turning ordinary days into generous ones.

Context sharpens the cynicism. Adams lived through an era when modern medicine was expanding but daily life still carried close-up risk: influenza, tuberculosis, workplace injury, chronic pain untreated or simply endured. In that world, “health” isn’t a wellness aesthetic; it’s the invisible privilege that lets optimism masquerade as insight. The line lands because it refuses the sentimental hierarchy of seasons and replaces it with a bracing metric: the body decides what’s beautiful.