Daily Inspiration Quote by Samuel Beckett

Not sainthood, just punctuality: Beckett lands his punchline where morality usually sits. The line shrugs at virtue and then quietly crowns something smaller, almost pathetic, as heroic: showing up. In Beckett’s world, that’s not a productivity mantra; it’s an existential stunt. Keeping an appointment implies a future that matters, a schedule that still holds, a faith (thin but stubborn) that time is going somewhere. When your characters live in the long after-hours of meaning, “we kept our appointment” becomes a defiant little ritual against entropy.

The subtext is classic Beckettian anti-consolation. “We are not saints” disarms any appetite for nobility, and it’s also a preemptive strike against the audience’s urge to romanticize suffering. Then comes the sting: “How many people can boast as much?” The boast is comically small, which is precisely why it works. It exposes how flimsy most moral self-regard is, how rarely we can even claim consistency, let alone goodness. Beckett’s irony isn’t cruelty for its own sake; it’s a pressure test for human dignity under low light.

Contextually, Beckett writes after the 20th century has torched grand narratives - religious, political, aesthetic. He also carried the lived knowledge of wartime resistance and aftermath. Against that backdrop, the line reads like a secular prayer: no halos, no redemption arcs, just the bare minimum of commitment honored. In Beckett, that minimum is what’s left of the soul - and it’s enough to keep the clock ticking.