Life & Wisdom Quote by George Herbert

A sigh in iambic clothing: Herbert compresses a whole spiritual autobiography into a single, chastening metric. "Half spent" lands like an audit. Life isn’t merely passing; it’s being used up, quietly, before we’ve even learned the terms of the bargain. The line works because it refuses the comforting idea that wisdom arrives on schedule. Instead, it proposes a cruel asymmetry: experience is the price of understanding, but you only learn what experience costs after you’ve paid.

Herbert, a metaphysical poet and Anglican priest writing in a century of plague, political upheaval, and short life expectancies, isn’t offering a trendy meditation on "being present". He’s sounding a theological and psychological alarm. The subtext is penitential: self-knowledge comes late, and lateness matters when the soul is at stake. The apparent simplicity masks a double edge. If we don’t know what life is for half of it, then our early commitments - ambitions, romances, reputations, even pieties - may be built on mistaken definitions. That’s not just unfortunate; it’s spiritually dangerous.

The sentence also carries Herbert’s signature humility. He isn’t lecturing from a mountaintop; he’s implicating himself in the common delusion that living automatically teaches you how to live. The quiet brilliance is its timekeeping: by the moment you feel the truth of the line, you’ve already proven it.