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Tracing Quotations

It’s Never Too Late To Be What You Might Have Been

George Eliot? Adelaide Anne Procter? Apocryphal? Anonymous?

Dear Quote Investigator: My favorite quotation about untapped potential and enduring spirit is attributed to the prominent Victorian novelist George Eliot:

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

This popular saying has been printed on refrigerator magnets, posters, shirts, and key chains. But I have never seen the source specified. Are these really the words of George Eliot?

Quote Investigator: George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans who died in 1880. Researchers have been unable to locate this quotation in her books or letters. Currently, the ascription to Eliot has no substantive support.

The earliest evidence of an exact match known to QI appeared in “Literary News: A Monthly Journal of Current Literature” in 1881. The editor held a contest to gather the best quotations from Eliot’s oeuvre. The following was the announcement printed in the April 1881 issue: [1] 1881 April, Literary News Prize Question No. 31: Subject: Gems from George Eliot, Quote Page 113, Publisher and Editor: F. Leypoldt, New York. (Google Books Full View) link

Prize Question No 31. Subject: Gems from George Eliot. Quote the most striking passage known to you from George Eliot’s writings; not to exceed thirty words. Answers due May 20.

In June 1881 the excerpts submitted by readers were printed in the periodical; however, they were not fully vetted for accuracy. Also, some entries did not specify the originating text. For example, these four items were included in the list. Boldface has been added to excerpts: [2] 1881 June, Literary News Prize Question No. 31: Subject: Gems from George Eliot, (Quote Number 23), Start Page 176, Quote Page 177, Publisher and Editor: F. Leypoldt, New York. (Google Books Full … Continue reading

We present herewith the selections made by our readers from the writings of George Eliot. Excluding all that exceed the prescribed limit of thirty words, we present herewith seventy-one selections. … 21. “Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.”—Adam Bede 22. “A woman’s choice generally means taking the only man she can get.” —Middlemarch. 23. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” 24. “I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish; God Almighty made ’em to match the men.”

Statement 21 was correct though truncated. Statement 22 was slightly inaccurate; the novel used the word “usually” instead of “generally”. Statement 23 has never been found in the works of Eliot. Statement 24 did not list a source, but it did appear in “Adam Bede”.

This important citation with the incorrect attribution of the target quotation was identified by Professor Leah Price. After 1881 quotation number 23 started to appear in a variety of publications credited to George Eliot, and “Literary News” may have been the prime locus for its dissemination.

A very interesting partial match for the saying appeared earlier in a poem in 1859. Details are given further below.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

A thematic precursor was included in a lecture published in London in 1847. The following passage highlighted the possibility of growth and accomplishment late in life: [3] 1847, Sequel to Lectures Delivered at Literary and Mechanics’ Institutions by William Henry Leatham, “Lecture 1: The Rise, Growth, Maturity, and Prospects of English Literature, &c, … Continue reading

It is never too late to become a scholar, or a great man. Cato, the censor, learnt Greek in his old age. King Alfred was twelve years old before he could repeat his alphabet. Cromwell was forty-two years of age before he fought his first battle—and Blake was fifty before he entered the navy.

In 1859 the poet Adelaide Anne Procter released “The Ghost in the Picture Room” in the special Christmas issue of the London periodical “All the Year Round” which was edited by Charles Dickens. QI believes that the following couplet embodied a strong conceptual match for the quotation under investigation and a partial syntactic match:

No star is ever lost we once have seen, We always may be what we might have been.

The larger context within the work discussed the possibility of leading a “noble life”. The vicissitudes of subsisting might deflect one from pursuing an ideal path, but the author contended that crucial alternatives were not foreclosed, and one might still pursue a “noble life” at any time. The poem became better known under the title “A Legend of Provence”: [4] 1859 December 13, All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal, Conducted by Charles Dickens, (The Haunted House: The Extra Christmas Number of All the Year Round. Containing the amount of two ordinary … Continue reading [5] 1864, The Poems of Adelaide A. Procter by Adelaide Anne Procter, Poem: A Legend of Provence, Start Page 181, Quote Page 191, Ticknor and Fields, Boston, Massachusetts. (Google Books Full View) link

Have we not all, amid life’s petty strife, Some pure ideal of a noble life That once seemed possible? Did we not hear The flutter of its wings, and feel it near, And just within our reach? It was. And yet We lost it in this daily jar and fret, And now live idle in a vague regret; But still our place is kept, and it will wait, Ready for us to fill it, soon or late. No star is ever lost we once have seen, We always may be what we might have been. Since good, tho’ only thought, has life and breath, God’s life—can always be redeemed from death; And evil, in its nature, is decay, And any hour can blot it all away; The hopes that, lost, in some far distance seem. May be the truer life, and this the dream.

Procter’s couplet was memorable, and it has continued to circulate up to the present day. In 1879 “Replies: A Weekly Journal of Question and Answer” printed the words within a response to a query about the second line: [6] 1879 December 20, Replies: A Weekly Journal of Question and Answer, Conducted by Malcolm C. Salaman, Volume 2, Number 38, Answers to Correspondents, Quote Page 189, Column 1, Published by The … Continue reading

Devorgill.—The line, ‘We always may be what we might have been,’ occurs in a passage in the ‘Legend of Provence,’ by Adelaide Anne Procter— ‘No star is ever lost we once have seen, We always may be what we might have been.’

In 1881 the quotation being traced was printed in “Literary News” as noted previously. The expression was submitted by a reader of the periodical and no source was designated:

In 1884 the saying was included in an article about Eliot published in the “Illinois School Journal’. The phrase appeared in a section called “Extracts” that listed twenty quotes attributed to Eliot. [7] 1884 February, Illinois School Journal, General Exercises by Edward Bangs, (Discussion of George Eliot: 1820-1880), Start Page 250, Quote Page 250, Normal, Illinois. (Google Books Full View) link

In 1887 “The English Language: Its Grammar, History and Literature” was published, and a section about George Eliot’s prose style praised her work exuberantly: [8] 1887, The English Language: Its Grammar, History and Literature by J. M. D. Meiklejohn (John Miller Dow Meiklejohn), Quote Page 365, D.C. Heath & Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Google Books … Continue reading

Her power is sometimes almost Shakespearian. Like Shakespeare, she gives us a large number of wise sayings, expressed in the pithiest language. The following are a few:— “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” “It is easy finding reasons why other people should be patient.” “Genius, at first, is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.”

The maxim was not universally embraced. In 1896 a book titled “The Education of the Central Nervous System” was sharply critical because the author contended that training in the early years of life was essential: [9] 1896, The Education of the Central Nervous System: A Study of Foundations, Especially of Sensory and Motor Training by Reuben Post Halleck, Quote Page 94, Macmillan Company, New York. (Google Books … Continue reading

From this mistaken notion arose such adages as: “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” It would be nearer the truth to say: “It is always too late to be what you might have been.” With each advancing year, this becomes an absolute truth in the case of the vast majority who have reached the age of twenty.

In 1897 William DeVere, self-described tramp poet of the West, published a short piece titled “Horse Philosophy” that included a set of adages and a rephrased unattributed version of Procter’s words: [10] 1897, Jim Marshall’s New Planner and Other Western Stories (Specially adapted for public reading) by William De Vere, Horse Philosophy, Quote Page 74, M. Witmark & Sons, New York. (Google … Continue reading

And try to do to others as you’d have them do to you. Remember that no star is lost that you might once have seen, Remember that you always may be what you might have been, No matter what your task in life be sure you never shirk,

In 2011 “The New Yorker” magazine published “Middlemarch and Me: What George Eliot Teaches Us” by Rebecca Mead who discussed the quotation and its mysterious ascription to Eliot. Mead’s stance was skeptical, and she recounted the words of Professor Leah Price: [11] 2011 February 14, The New Yorker, Life and Letters: Middlemarch and Me: What George Eliot teaches us by Rebecca Mead, Start Page 76, Quote Page 82, Column 2 and 3,The New Yorker Magazine, Inc., New … Continue reading

I’ve always assumed it was apocryphal. It shows up nowhere in full text searches of G.E.’s work. What’s strange is not that the attribution is so persistent but that it starts very early.

Price told Mead about the 1881 contest in “Literary News” that presented the first known instance of the quotation.

In conclusion, QI speculates that the quote attributed to George Eliot is traceable to the line written by Adelaide Anne Procter: “We always may be what we might have been”. In this scenario Procter’s statement would have been rephrased and then reassigned to Eliot. This process may have occurred in the mind of the individual who sent the quote to “Literary News”. Alternatively, the transition may have occurred in multiple steps. Perhaps future research will uncover these intermediary steps. Of course, other hypotheses are not ruled out.

(Great thanks to Karen Pfeiffer Jones @nykaren24 whose inquiry gave impetus to QI to formulate this question and initiate this exploration. Special thanks to Rebecca Mead and Leah Price for their very valuable efforts.)

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Lesson of the Day: Inspiration From The Times’s ‘It’s Never Too Late’ Series

In this lesson, students will read about people who pursued dreams later in life. Then, they will interview someone with a similar story, or make a plan to pursue a dream of their own.

essay it never too late

By Jeremy Engle

Lesson Overview

Featured Series: “It’s Never Too Late”

Many of us dream of trying something new, but then somehow fail to get around to it. A new Times series, “It’s Never Too Late,” tells the inspiring stories of people who have decided to switch gears, change their lives and pursue their dreams.

Whether it’s playing the cello , climbing a mountain , learning to ride horseback or recording your first album, these stories are a reminder that you never know what the future holds — but you do have the power to shape it. As Vijaya Srivastava, who learned to swim at 68, put it: “Finally I decided if I don’t try, it’s never going to happen.”

In this lesson, you will learn about people who prove that you can always change your life. In a Going Further activity, you will use some of the Times’s articles as mentor texts to create your own portrait of an older person who tried something new later in their lives. Or, you can make a plan to pursue a dream of your own!

Consider the two sayings:

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“It's never too late to be what you might have been.”

Which of these sayings do you find more accurate, more true to life?

Turn to a partner and share your thoughts. Then, discuss one or more of the following questions:

Are there certain things that are easier or harder to learn, depending on your age?

Is there anything that, in your relatively young life, you already feel it’s too late to try?

Are there any goals you have that might be better to pursue when you are older?

Article Choices:

Choose one of the articles in the “It’s Never Too Late” series to read in its entirety:

It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love For Phyllis Raphael, 86, a chance meeting on the street turned into a get-together. Then came a date. A second and third followed. So did a love affair.

It’s Never Too Late to Record Your First Album For a celebrated architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley, an album of 11 original songs, in a variety of genres, was eight decades in the making.

It’s Never Too Late to Follow Your Spiritual Calling After coming out as a transgender woman more than two years ago, Vica Steel never dreamed of forging a path to church leadership. Until now.

It’s Never Too Late to Climb That Mountain Dierdre Wolownick, whose son, Alex Honnold, is one of the world’s top rock climbers, ascended Yosemite’s El Capitan to celebrate her 70th birthday.

It’s Never Too Late to Publish a Debut Book and Score a Netflix Deal Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, at 50, is not the average age of a debut author. But the public school teacher describes herself as a “literary debutante” with the October publication of “My Monticello.”

Questions for Writing and Discussion

Answer the questions below based on the article you read:

1. Which article in the “It’s Never Too Late” series did you select and why? Give a short snapshot of the older person profiled in the piece, including at least two significant biographical details.

2. What was this person’s goal? What obstacles prevented them from pursuing their dream when they were younger? What finally prompted or inspired them to go for it?

3. What did they discover when they achieved their long-sought-after goal — about themselves and about life?

4. What quote, image or detail from the article did you find most surprising, moving or memorable? If you could interview the person profiled in the article, what else would you want to know about them? Why?

5. Return to the warm-up activity: How does reading the article add to or change your perspective on the two sayings? What life lessons and inspiration can you draw from the story? Have you ever had a dream or goal? If so, are you now more inspired to pursue it? How might you do that?

Going Further

Option 1: Interview an older person

Imagine you have been hired to write the next entry in the “It’s Never Too Late” series. Who would you profile and why? What questions would you ask? How might these experiences inform, engage and inspire readers of The Times?

Do you know any inspiring people who prove it’s never too late to switch gears, change a life and pursue dreams? You can choose to spotlight someone in your own family.

Whomever you choose, follow the formula used in this column. Make sure to include a photo, a brief preface introducing the person (including at least two biographical details about their life before they reached their goal), and an interview excerpt that you feel highlights that person’s achievement, in their own words.

Be sure to do some background research on the person you choose so you can develop a set of interview questions in advance. You can also draw from some of the questions used in the series, such as: Tell me about the life you’d been leading before this change? How did you find the courage and strength to take that initial step? What were the biggest challenges in your journey? What would you tell other people who feel stuck and are looking to make a change?

If you are doing this project as a class, you might bring your stories together when everyone is done and publish them somehow — on a school website, via social media, or by printing them and hanging them in a public place.

Option 2: Pursue a goal you always dreamed of, but never had the courage to try.

“It’s Never Too Late” is the name of the Times series, but why wait until you are much older? Think of a goal — big or small — and go for it now!

Whether it’s learning to swim, playing a new musical instrument or climbing a mountain for the first time, now it’s your turn to learn a new skill, pursue a deferred dream or just try something completely different.

Once you settle on your goal, map it out. How will you start pursuing it now? Where do you hope to end up? What steps will help you get there? Create a path for yourself.

For inspiration, you might use the stories from the series as well as the sage advice of its protagonists, such as the words of 93-year-old Vera Jiji, who took up cello at 62. She urged others: “Don’t say no to yourself.” Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, who at 50 made her literary debut, advised others to “embrace rejection and find your people.” And Rose Young, who learned to ride a horse at 63, said, “Don’t be afraid of embarrassment or opening yourself up to criticism.”

We wish you the best in realizing your goal!

Want more Lessons of the Day? You can find them all here .

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

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‘It’s never too late’ – Origin, Meaning, Expansion, Importance

Category: Proverbs, Sayings, Idioms and Phrases On August 8, 2016 By LightHouse

Origin of the phrase.

The earliest written form of the proverb, ‘it’s never too late’, is often attested to be in the works of the novelist George Eliot in the late nineteenth century.

However, it is likely that by the time Eliot wrote the proverb down, people had been saying it to each other for centuries.

This proverb, “it’s never too late”, means that ‘it does not matter how late it is, a person should always take the opportunity to pursue their goals’. It means that:

  • there is always time to start what we wanted to start,
  • there is always time to pick up again something that we had stopped doing.
  • the present moment is always a great time to follow our dreams.

This proverb encourages us to get to work. It emphasizes on the fact that that a new task can be started anytime and there is no need to waste any further time.

To what does ‘it’ refer, for example? It can be whatever activity the person using the proverb wants it to refer to.

This proverb is often cited as an answer to a complaint: when people complain ‘it is too late to do a thing’, other can reply that ‘it’s never too late’.

The idea of being too late is crucial to this proverb. Too late can be many things. It might mean missing a deadline for school. Or, it might mean getting too old to pursue a certain activity. Often, the idea of what is too late or on time is a subjective one.

The aim of this proverb is to ‘motivate people to begin projects that they had been putting off’ . It’s never to late to learn something new. There’s always time to get an education. This proverb can be used to combat ageism.

Often, the phrase ‘it’s never too late’ is often incorporated into a longer phrase. For example, people sometimes say ‘it’s never too late to begin’ or ‘it’s never too late to change your life’.

The importance of this proverb.

1. Motivation: This proverb encourages people to start on their projects and realize their dreams.

2. Uplifting: When people feel despairing, as if they have missed their chance to do something they wanted to do, the proverb ‘it’s never too late’ can uplift them and banish those despairing feelings.

3. Countering prejudice: It is often said that at a certain point in our lives, it is too late to begin some projects. For example, there are those who think that pensioners are too old to go to high school or university or that people who missed out on passing their driving test the first time around have lost their opportunity completely. The proverb ‘it’s never too late’ assures us that, no matter how old we are, we can start anything that we want to!

4. Helping with work stress: In our working lives, we are often hit with deadlines that we cannot always meet. The proverb ‘it’s never too late’ encourages us to believe that it is never too late to salvage a situation.

5. Recovering relationships: This proverb is often cited in a romantic context. It’s never too late to tell the love of our life that we love them or to reconcile after some time apart.

Conclusion.

The proverb ‘it’s never too late’ is a positive and encouraging phrase that enables people to live life to the full. If we live by this proverb, rather than feeling like one missed opportunity means that we can never go back and start all over again, we know that it is in our power to begin whatever projects we want to begin – at any time of life. We can apply this proverb to all areas of life, whether in a professional context or in a romantic and personal context.

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never too late to learn, give your reason and discusss

Ielts essay never too late to learn, give your reason and discusss.

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  • The charts show the Australian school leavers did immediately after leaving secondary school. The given pie charts give information about what Australian students decided to do after graduating from secondary school in 1980, 1990, and 2000. Overall, throughout the years the proportion of this group of Australian students who were employed was growing, while there was a decline in the portio ...
  • In many countries there has been an increase in social problems involving teenagers in recent years. Many people believe that this is due to modern lifestyles because parents spend more and more time at work and have less time to supervise their children. Modern lifestyle has changed many facets of life, particularly the dramatical fall in standard of ethics among teenagers, followed by the rocket in the rate of juvenile delinquency. While parental negligence is considered to be assume primarily responsibility for such adverse issue, I believe that o ...
  • In the future it seems more difficult to live on the earth. More money should be spent on researching other planets to live, such as Mars. It has been observed that life on the one planet create more problems for individual. Although, some people that administration should expand currency for finding life on other spaces. Living on the earth would be more distinguish. I dis ugly these given statement to a large extent. My inclination i ...
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  • Ordinary people try to copy famous people either reading magazines or watching TV. Why do they do this. Do you think it is a good idea to copy famous people. It is true that ordinary people try to copy famous by either the us of magazines or by watching their shows on TV. I would say that that it would have a profound influence on people on how they operate, think & argue in their life. On one hand, people copying from famous people is a good thing as i ...
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Is It Really Too Late to Learn New Skills?

By Margaret Talbot

Among the things I have not missed since entering middle age is the sensation of being an absolute beginner. It has been decades since I’ve sat in a classroom in a gathering cloud of incomprehension (Algebra 2, tenth grade) or sincerely tried, lesson after lesson, to acquire a skill that was clearly not destined to play a large role in my life (modern dance, twelfth grade). Learning to ride a bicycle in my early thirties was an exception—a little mortifying when my husband had to run alongside the bike, as you would with a child—but ultimately rewarding. Less so was the time when a group of Japanese schoolchildren tried to teach me origami at a public event where I was the guest of honor—I’ll never forget their sombre puzzlement as my clumsy fingers mutilated yet another paper crane.

Like Tom Vanderbilt, a journalist and the author of “Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning” (Knopf), I learn new facts all the time but new skills seldom. Journalists regularly drop into unfamiliar subcultures and domains of expertise, learning enough at least to ask the right questions. The distinction he draws between his energetic stockpiling of declarative knowledge, or knowing that , and his scant attention to procedural knowledge, or knowing how , is familiar to me. The prospect of reinventing myself as, say, a late-blooming skier or ceramicist or marathon runner sparks only an idle interest, something like wondering what it might be like to live in some small town you pass on the highway.

There is certainly a way to put a positive spin on that reluctance. If you love your job and find it intellectually and creatively fulfilling, you may not feel the urge to discover other rooms in the house of your mind, whatever hidden talents and lost callings may repose there. But there are less happy forces at work, too. There’s the fear of being bad at something you think is worthwhile—and, maybe even more so, being seen to be bad at it—when you have accustomed yourself to knowing, more or less, what you’re doing. What’s the point of starting something new when you know you’ll never be much good at it? Middle age, to go by my experience—and plenty of research—brings greater emotional equanimity, an unspectacular advantage but a relief. (The lows aren’t as low, the highs not as high.) Starting all over at something would seem to put you right back into that emotional churn—exhilaration, self-doubt, but without the open-ended possibilities and renewable energy of youth. Parties mean something different and far more exciting when you’re younger and you might meet a person who will change your life; so does learning something new—it might be fun, but it’s less likely to transform your destiny at forty or fifty.

In “Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over,” Nell Painter, as distinguished a historian as they come—legions of honors, seven books, a Princeton professorship—recounts her experience earning first a B.F.A. at Rutgers and then an M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design while in her sixties. As a Black woman used to feeling either uncomfortably singled out or ignored in public spaces where Black women were few, she was taken aback in art school to find that “old” was such an overwhelming signifier: “It wasn’t that I stopped being my individual self or stopped being black or stopped being female, but that old , now linked to my sex, obscured everything else beyond old lady .” Painter finds herself periodically undone by the overt discouragement of some of her teachers or the silence of her fellow-students during group crits of her work—wondering if they were “critiquing me, old-black-woman-totally-out-of-place,” or her work. Reading her book, I was full of admiration for Painter’s willingness to take herself out of a world in which her currency—scholarly accomplishment—commanded respect and put herself into a different one where that coin often went unrecognized altogether, all out of exultation in the art-making itself. But her quest also induced some anxiety in me.

Painter is no dilettante: she’s clear about not wanting to be a “Sunday Painter”; she is determined to be an Artist, and recognized as such. But “dilettante” is one of those words which deter people from taking up new pursuits as adults. Many of us are wary of being dismissed as dabblers, people who have a little too much leisure, who are a little too cute and privileged in our pastimes. This seems a narrative worth pushing back against. We might remember, as Vanderbilt points out, that the word “dilettante” comes from the Italian for “to delight.” In the eighteenth century, a group of aristocratic Englishmen popularized the term, founding the Society of the Dilettanti to undertake tours of the Continent, promote the art of knowledgeable conversation, collect art, and subsidize archeological expeditions. Frederick II of Prussia dissed the dilettanti as “lovers of the arts and sciences” who “understand them only superficially but who however are ranked in superior class to those who are totally ignorant.” (They were, of course, wealthy, with oodles of time on their hands.) The term turned more pejorative in modern times, with the rise of professions and of licensed expertise. But if you think of dilettantism as an endorsement of learning for learning’s sake—not for remuneration or career advancement but merely because it delights the mind—what’s not to love?

Maybe it could be an antidote to the self-reported perfectionism that has grown steadily more prevalent among college students in the past three decades. Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill, the authors of a 2019 study on perfectionism among American, British, and Canadian college students, have written that “increasingly, young people hold irrational ideals for themselves, ideals that manifest in unrealistic expectations for academic and professional achievement, how they should look, and what they should own,” and are worried that others will judge them harshly for their perceived failings. This is not, the researchers point out, good for mental health. In the U.S., we’ll be living, for the foreseeable future, in a competitive, individualistic, allegedly meritocratic society, where we can inspect and troll and post humiliating videos of one another all the live-long day. Being willing to involve yourself in something you’re mediocre at but intrinsically enjoy, to give yourself over to the imperfect pursuit of something you’d like to know how to do for no particular reason, seems like a small form of resistance.

Tom Vanderbilt got motivated to start learning again during the time he spent waiting about while his young daughter did her round of lessons and activities. Many of us have been there, “on some windowless lower level of a school huddled near an electrical outlet to keep your device alive,” as he nicely puts it—waiting, avoiding the parents who want to talk scores and rankings, trying to shoehorn a bit of work into a stranded hour or two. But not many of us are inspired to wonder, in such moments, why we ourselves aren’t in there practicing our embouchure on the trumpet or our Salchow on the ice. This may speak to my essential laziness, but I have fond memories of curling up on the child-size couch in the musty, overheated basement of our local community center reading a book for a stolen hour, while my kids took drum lessons and fencing classes. Vanderbilt, on the other hand, asks himself whether “we, in our constant chaperoning of these lessons, were imparting a subtle lesson: that learning was for the young.” Rather than molder on the sidelines, he decides to throw himself into acquiring five new skills. (That’s his term, though I started to think of these skills as “accomplishments” in the way that marriageable Jane Austen heroines have them, talents that make a long evening pass more agreeably, that can turn a person into more engaging company, for herself as much as for others.) Vanderbilt’s search is for “the naïve optimism, the hypervigilant alertness that comes with novelty and insecurity, the willingness to look foolish, and the permission to ask obvious questions—the unencumbered beginner’s mind. ” And so he tries to achieve competence, not mastery, in chess, singing, surfing, drawing, and making. (He learns to weld a wedding ring to replace two he lost surfing.) He adds juggling, not because he’s so interested in it but because—with its steep and obvious learning curve (most people, starting from scratch, can learn to juggle three balls in a few days) and its fun factor—juggling is an oft-used task for laboratory studies of how people learn. These accomplishments aren’t likely to help his job performance as a journalist, or to be marketable in any way, except insofar as the learning of them forms the idea for the book.

“Hes giggling to himself. Get ready for a dad joke.”

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Vanderbilt is good on the specific joys and embarrassments of being a late-blooming novice, or “kook,” as surfers sometimes call gauche beginners. How you think you know how to sing a song but actually know only how to sing along with one, so that, when you hear your own voice, stripped of the merciful camouflage the recorded version provides, “you’re not only hearing the song as you’ve never quite heard it, you are hearing your voice as you’ve never quite heard it.” The particular, democratic pleasure of making that voice coalesce with others’ in a choir, coupled with the way, when friends and family come to see your adult group perform, “the parental smile of eternal indulgence gives way to a more complicated expression.” The fact that feedback, especially the positive kind stressing what you’re doing right, delivered by an actual human teacher or coach watching what you do, is crucial for a beginner—which might seem obvious except that, in an age when so many instructional videos of every sort are available online, you might get lulled into thinking you could learn just as well without it. The weirdness of the phenomenon that, for many of us, our drawing skills are frozen forever as they were when we were kids. Children tend to draw better, Vanderbilt explains, when they are around five years old and rendering what they feel; later, they fall into what the psychologist Howard Gardner calls “the doldrums of literalism ”—trying to draw exactly what they see but without the technical skill or instruction that would allow them to do so effectively. Many of us never progress beyond that stage. Personally, I’m stuck at about age eight, when I filled notebooks with ungainly, scampering horses. Yet I was entranced by how both Vanderbilt and, in her far more ambitious way, Painter describe drawing as an unusually absorbing, almost meditative task—one that makes you look at the world differently even when you’re not actually doing it and pours you into undistracted flow when you are.

One problem with teaching an old dog new tricks is that certain cognitive abilities decline with age, and by “age” I mean starting as early as one’s twenties. Mental-processing speed is the big one. Maybe that’s one reason that air-traffic controllers have to retire at age fifty-six, while English professors can stay at it indefinitely. Vanderbilt cites the work of Neil Charness, a psychology professor at Florida State University, who has shown that the older a chess player is the slower she is to perceive a threatened check, no matter what her skill level. Processing speed is why I invariably lose against my daughter (pretty good-naturedly, if you ask me) at a game that I continue to play: Anomia. In this game, players flip cards bearing the names of categories (dog breeds, Olympic athletes, talk-show hosts, whatever), and, if your card displays the same small symbol as one of your opponents’ does, you try to be the first to call out something belonging to the other person’s category. If my daughter and I each had ten minutes to list as many talk-show hosts as we could, I’d probably triumph—after all, I have several decades of late-night-TV viewing over her. But, with speed the essence, a second’s lag in my response speed cooks my goose every game.

Still, as Rich Karlgaard notes in his reassuring book “Late Bloomers: The Hidden Strengths of Learning and Succeeding at Your Own Pace,” there are cognitive compensations. “Our brains are constantly forming neural networks and pattern-recognition capabilities that we didn’t have in our youth when we had blazing synaptic horsepower,” he writes. Fluid intelligence, which encompasses the capacity to suss out novel challenges and think on one’s feet, favors the young. But crystallized intelligence—the ability to draw on one’s accumulated store of knowledge, expertise, and Fingerspitzengefühl —is often enriched by advancing age. And there’s more to it than that: particular cognitive skills rise and fall at different rates across the life span, as Joshua K. Hartshorne, now a professor of psychology at Boston College, and Laura T. Germine, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, show in a 2015 paper on the subject. Processing speed peaks in the late teens, short-term memory for names at around twenty-two, short-term memory for faces at around thirty, vocabulary at around fifty (in some studies, even at around sixty-five), while social understanding, including the ability to recognize and interpret other people’s emotions, rises at around forty and tends to remain high. “Not only is there no age at which humans are performing at peak at all cognitive tasks,” Hartshorne and Germine conclude, “there may not be an age at which humans are at peak on most cognitive tasks.” This helps Karlgaard’s case that we need a “kinder clock for human development”—societal pressure on young adults to specialize and succeed right out of college is as wrongheaded and oppressive on the one end of life as patronizing attitudes toward the old are on the other.

The gift of crystallized intelligence explains why some people can bloom spectacularly when they’re older—especially, perhaps, in a field like literature, where a rich vein of life experience can be a writerly asset. Annie Proulx published her first novel at the age of fifty-six, Raymond Chandler at fifty-one. Frank McCourt, who had been a high-school teacher in New York City for much of his career, published his first book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “Angela’s Ashes,” at sixty-six. Edith Wharton, who had been a society matron prone to neurasthenia and trapped in a gilded cage of a marriage, produced no novels until she was forty. Publishing fiction awakened her from what she described as “a kind of torpor,” a familiar feeling for the true later bloomer. “I had groped my way through to my vocation,” Wharton wrote, “and thereafter I never questioned that story-telling was my job.”

In science and technology, we often think of the people who make precocious breakthroughs as the true geniuses—Einstein developing his special theory of relativity at twenty-six. Einstein himself once said that “a person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so.” A classic paper on the relationship between age and scientific creativity showed that American Nobel winners tended to have done their prize-winning work at thirty-six in physics, thirty-nine in chemistry, and forty-one in medicine—that creativity rose in the twenties and thirties and began a gradual decline in the forties.

That picture has been complicated by more recent research. According to a 2014 working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, which undertook a broad review of the research on age and scientific breakthroughs, the average age at which people make significant contributions to science has been rising during the twentieth century—notably to forty-eight, for physicists. (One explanation might be that the “burden of knowledge” that people have to take on in many scientific disciplines has increased.) Meanwhile, a 2016 paper in Science that considered a wider range of scientists than Nobelists concluded that “the highest-impact work in a scientist’s career is randomly distributed within her body of work. That is, the highest-impact work can be, with the same probability, anywhere in the sequence of papers published by a scientist—it could be the first publication, could appear mid-career, or could be a scientist’s last publication.”

When it comes to more garden-variety late blooming, the kind of new competencies that Vanderbilt is seeking, he seems to have gone about it in the most promising way. For one thing, it appears that people may learn better when they are learning multiple skills at once, as Vanderbilt did. A recent study that looked at the experiences of adults over fifty-five who learned three new skills at once—for example, Spanish, drawing, and music composition—found that they not only acquired proficiency in these areas but improved their cognitive functioning over all, including working and episodic memory. In a 2017 paper, Rachel Wu, a neuroscientist at U.C. Riverside, and her co-authors, George W. Rebok and Feng Vankee Lin, propose six factors that they think are needed to sustain cognitive development, factors that tend to be less present in people’s lives as they enter young adulthood and certainly as they grow old. These include what the Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset,” the belief that abilities are not fixed but can improve with effort; a commitment to serious rather than “hobby learning” (in which “the learner casually picks up skills for a short period and then quits due to difficulty, disinterest, or other time commitments”); a forgiving environment that promotes what Dweck calls a “not yet” rather than a “cannot” approach; and a habit of learning multiple skills simultaneously, which may help by encouraging the application of capacities acquired in one domain to another. What these elements have in common, Wu and her co-authors point out, is that they tend to replicate how children learn.

So eager have I been all my life to leave behind the subjects I was bad at and hunker down with the ones I was good at—a balm in many ways—that, until reading these books, I’d sort of forgotten the youthful pleasure of moving our little tokens ahead on a bunch of winding pathways of aptitude, lagging behind here, surging ahead there. I’d been out of touch with that sense of life as something that might encompass multiple possibilities for skill and artistry. But now I’ve been thinking about taking up singing in a serious way again, learning some of the jazz standards my mom, a professional singer, used to croon to me at bedtime. If learning like a child sounds a little airy-fairy, whatever the neuroscience research says, try recalling what it felt like to learn how to do something new when you didn’t really care what your performance of it said about your place in the world, when you didn’t know what you didn’t know. It might feel like a whole new beginning. ♦

essay it never too late

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Expansion of an Idea – “It’s Never Too Late to Mend” for Students / Teachers / Parents

The proverb “It’s Never Too Late to Mend” emphasizes the importance of continuing efforts to make amends, even after a long period of time has passed. This proverb teaches us that it is never too late to take steps towards reconciliation, healing, and growth. It reminds us that it is never too late to make positive changes in our lives, relationships, and communities.

It's Never Too Late to Mend

It’s Never Too Late to Mend

The proverb “It’s never too late to mend” suggests that no matter how difficult or hopeless a situation or relationship may seem, it is always possible to repair or improve it. This phrase implies that it is never too late to make amends, seek forgiveness, or take steps to resolve a conflict.

The proverb emphasizes the importance of perseverance and a positive attitude in the face of challenges. It encourages us to remain hopeful and to believe that positive change is possible, even when things may seem dire or impossible.

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Essay on Better Late Than Never

Students are often asked to write an essay on Better Late Than Never in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Better Late Than Never

Introduction.

“Better Late Than Never” is a popular saying that means it’s better to do something late than not doing it at all. It teaches us the value of time and encourages us to complete our tasks, even if we are late.

Importance of Time

Time is precious. Once gone, it never comes back. It’s important to do things on time. But if for some reason we can’t, we should still try to finish it. It’s better to be late than never.

Examples from Life

In real life, we see many examples of this saying. If we are late for school, it’s better to still go than miss the whole day. If we forget a friend’s birthday, it’s better to wish late than not at all.

In conclusion, “Better Late Than Never” is a wise saying. It teaches us to not give up even if we are late. It tells us that it’s never too late to do the right thing.

250 Words Essay on Better Late Than Never

The phrase “Better Late Than Never” is an old saying that teaches us about the value of time. It means that it is better to do something late than not doing it at all. It tells us that even if we are late in achieving our goals, we should not give up.

Understanding the Phrase

“Better Late Than Never” is a simple yet powerful phrase. It tells us that if we have missed the right time to do something, we should not feel sad or lose hope. Instead, we should still go ahead and do it, even if it’s late. This phrase encourages us to keep trying and not give up.

Importance in Life

This phrase plays a key role in our lives. For example, if we start studying for an exam a bit late, it’s still better than not studying at all. Similarly, if we apologize for a mistake late, it’s better than never saying sorry. This phrase gives us hope and courage to face challenges, even if we are late.

In conclusion, “Better Late Than Never” is a wise saying that teaches us not to lose hope, even if we are late. It motivates us to keep trying and never give up. It tells us that it’s always better to do something late than never doing it at all. So, let’s keep this phrase in mind and apply it in our life.

500 Words Essay on Better Late Than Never

The phrase “Better Late Than Never” is a well-known English saying that has been used for many years. It suggests that it’s always good to do something, even if it is late, rather than not doing it at all. This phrase can be applied to many situations in our daily lives.

The Importance of the Phrase

The phrase “Better Late Than Never” is very important. It teaches us that it is never too late to start doing something good or beneficial. Sometimes we might feel that we are too late to start something new, like learning a musical instrument or a new language. This phrase encourages us not to give up, and to start, even if we feel it’s late. It’s about not missing opportunities and making the best use of our time.

Examples in Daily Life

We can see examples of “Better Late Than Never” in our daily lives. Suppose you have a project due tomorrow, and you haven’t started yet. You might think it’s too late and decide not to do it. But it’s better to start late and finish the project than not do it at all. You might not get the best grade, but you will learn something and avoid a zero.

Another example can be seen in our health habits. It’s never too late to start eating healthy or exercising. Even if you have been eating junk food all your life, it’s better to start eating healthy late than never.

Role in Personal Growth

The phrase “Better Late Than Never” also plays a big role in our personal growth. It helps us to stay motivated and keep trying, even when things get tough. It encourages us to take action, even if we think it’s too late. This can lead to personal development and growth.

For example, if you are an adult who never finished high school, it’s not too late to go back to school and get your diploma. It might be challenging, but it’s better to do it late than never.

In conclusion, the phrase “Better Late Than Never” is a valuable life lesson. It teaches us to never give up, to seize opportunities, and to strive for personal growth. It shows us that it’s never too late to start something good or beneficial. So, remember, it’s always better late than never!

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

  • Essay on Biggest Concern For The Future
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Might Could Studios

It’s Never Too Late

It's Never Too Late. . Christine Nishiyama, Might Could Studios.

I’ve received countless emails from people asking for variations of the same thing:

I’m just now learning to draw now at ___ age, and now I feel like I’ve wasted all those years.

I stopped drawing when I had kids, and now I feel like I’m way behind.

I wasn’t creative growing up, and now I feel like I’ll never catch up.

The question underneath these feelings is: Is it too late for me to start making art?

And my whole-hearted, immediate answer is: No! Absolutely not!

This is not a race y’all. I don’t care if you’re 21, 65, or 102—it’s never too late to start making art.

It's Never Too Late. . Christine Nishiyama, Might Could Studios.

Claude Monet didn’t begin painting until mid-life. He painted a little in his 30’s but didn’t fully discover his inimitable artistic style until his 40’s. Most of the paintings you would recognize by Monet were done in his 50’s-60s’s and he was making art well into his later years, including Water Lilies when he was 76!

Lisa Congdon didn’t begin making art until 32, and didn’t begin working full-time as an artist until over a decade later. She is currently 51, and is a well-known illustrator and has worked for huge clients (like MoMA!), exhibits her art in solo shows, sells art prints, and has published 8 books.

Ok, alright, so we know it can be done—you can start making art later in life. But how? Here are 4 tips on how to overcome the belief that it’s too late to start making art.

It's Never Too Late. . Christine Nishiyama, Might Could Studios.

You have the drive to make art, you have the desire to share it with others, but you also know it’s not as good as you want it to be. And that contradiction can stop you from doing anything at all.

We have to remind ourselves that everyone has to start somewhere, no matter what age they are. So you have to start wherever you are. You’ll never wake up one day and feel like you’re good enough to start or good enough to share. The only way to get better, is to begin.

“There is never a perfect time to do anything. So it’s important to just begin, even when you aren’t quite ready.” –Lisa Congdon

It's Never Too Late. . Christine Nishiyama, Might Could Studios.

Recognize the Strengths of Your Age

When Lisa Congdon began making art in her 30’s she believed she had an asset that younger artists didn’t: more self-awareness. She knew more about who she was and what she was interested in than she did decades ago. That self-awareness made it easier for her to hone in on her unique artistic style.

“I just started drawing the stuff I was interested in and I didn’t overthink it. It freed me a little bit.” –Lisa Congdon

Along with the more recognizable weaknesses, each decade also brings it’s own new strengths. Reminding yourself of the strengths of your age can help reframe how you think about your age and your art.

In your 20’s? Maybe you’re surrounded by other people who are also trying to find out who they are and what they’re passionate about, and interested in growing and learning.

In your 30’s? Maybe you have children in your life to serve as constant inspiration and shining examples of how to play.

In your 40’s? Maybe you’re beginning to tap into more self-awareness and who you are as a person.

In your 50’s? Maybe you’ve begun to realize what’s really important in life and feel more free to make art without the pressure of making money from it.

In your 60’s? Maybe you’re retired and have more time on your hands to make art freely.

In your 70’s? Maybe you have grandchildren who can make art alongside you.

In your 80’s? Maybe you have a lifetime of stories that you want to share with your family and friends through art.

In your 90’s? Maybe art is the way you keep your mind sharp and hands moving.

In your 100’s? Maybe you’re a kick butt granny/grandpa who does whatever the heck they want!

It's Never Too Late. . Christine Nishiyama, Might Could Studios.

Draw for Fun, Not for Money

Making art as a career is wonderful and amazing, and obviously I endorse it because it’s what I do for a living. But you cannot BEGIN learning how to make art and aim to make money off your art at the same time. You have to first focus on your art, and later think about how you could turn it into a career, if that’s what you wish, though I’m also a strong evangelist for art as a hobby. You don’t have to make money off your art for it to be valuable and worthwhile.

My point is, you have to find yourself as an artist before you can sell yourself as an artist. Trying to mix the two separate processes from the beginning is a recipe for struggle and creative block.

“The minute you put all of the pressure on your art career to feed you is the minute it becomes extremely stressful.” –Lisa Congdon

It's Never Too Late. . Christine Nishiyama, Might Could Studios.

Comparing Yourself to Others

Let’s cut to the chase. The real issue that the “is it too late?” question reveals is comparison. You are comparing yourself to other people and other people’s artistic journeys. They’ve already done this much by such-and-such age and I haven’t done anything! This mindset is where the sensation of needing to “catch up” and of “falling behind” originate.

It’s a matter of seeing other people’s accomplishments and setting those same expectations for ourselves immediately without thinking about that person’s journey, what they’ve been through, or how long they’ve been at it.

Everyone’s path is different and your’s probably happened the way it did for a reason. Maybe you needed that decade working as a science teacher to develop your passion for microbes which led you to creating abstract bacteria paintings. Maybe you needed those two decades being a mother to develop your taste for children’s stories which led you to making children’s books.

“I also had to work on embracing this idea that there is room for everyone. Just because someone else you admire has some amazing accomplishment doesn’t mean that your work has any less value, or that your path is any less significant.” –Lisa Congdon

Yes, learning to draw takes time. Yes, developing your artistic style takes time. None of this happens overnight. But that does not mean you should have started 20 years ago or that you can’t start now. You never know what your journey needed, but you can be confident that wherever life took you, it will somehow come through in your art. Because our art is who we are.

Six Rules for Making Art. Christine Nishiyama, Might Could Studios

Every person has a different story to tell and stories change as life rolls on. There’s plenty of room for all stories, all artists, and all ages.

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English Essay, Paragraph, Speech on “It is Never Too Late to Begin Once Again” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

It is never too late to begin once again.

To err is human. We often slip-up and make mistakes. All of us have our moments of weakness. We commit errors or careless acts which we live to regret later

More than the adults such acts are more common, especially in young boys and girls. They drift aimlessly without giving a thought to the future. It is during this period that they pick up bad habits. These habits could be anything from smoking to bunking classes or even eve-teasing. Such is the age that they do not realize their mistakes. Attempts by elders to correct them are taken as insults by them.

However, most of them realize their mistakes after some time. They understand that what they have been doing till now was wastage of time, energy and money. They become wiser and mend their ways. They correct themselves and begin in earnest to reform themselves. This they begin by giving up bad company and bad habits. They start paying more attention to their future and their profession. Until and unless they do not commit any serious offense the society is always willing to give them a second chance.

This has happened to most of us. Those who have come back from the path of sin and self-pleasure very early in their lives are today much wiser and sensitive and better human beings. While those who have realized their mistakes late in their lives have much to regret. They are the ones who have in their pursuit of pleasure just lost find sincere friendship and relationships. These people can once again try to restart their lives. However, it will remain doubtful that they may become happy and useful citizens. This is so because too much time has gone for them to be accepted once again as a useful member of the society

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It's Never Too Late To Start Over

It’s Never Too Late To Start Over

Marisa Donnelly

It’s never too late to start over. To hit the pause button. Breathe. Then begin again.

You don’t need to lose yourself in the shuffle, get caught up in your mistakes and your fears and your anxieties. You don’t have to hold onto your anger or your sadness and carry it with you in a little jar. You are more than a little jar, waiting to be filled by unsatisfying things—material things, superficial love, addictions and vices and so many other negatives that leave you feeling emptier than before. You are more than that little jar you feel defines the person you are, so much so that you try to fit yourself in its glass walls, try to keep contained within the edges and not overflow.

Life is imperfect. It’s beautiful and complicated and burdensome and messy. And you are a part of it, a part that grows and changes and laughs and loves and gets broken and comes back together. But there will never be a time when you can’t just step back and start all over.

There is no rewind, but you can always restart, let go. Let go of the toxic friends, of the urge to gossip, of the anxieties over what he said and she said, of the worry you feel over a future you cannot control. Let go. It’s never too late to put down that jar you’re carrying and pull yourself out of it. Grab your legs and arms and brain and heart and soul and reconstruct them back into the self you’re supposed to be. Reshape. Remold. Reconnect. And begin again.

You are not supposed to be this static person, this person you’ve always been and always will be. The world is continually shifting, and you are continually moving within it, in whatever direction you want. If you don’t like that direction, turn. Don’t turn back. Don’t turn around. Just turn. Right. Left. Diagonal. Cut across the grass. Take a back road.

It’s never too late to spin things around for the better. To leave what’s been broken and acknowledge that you can’t put it back together exactly how it was. To smile at the things you cannot replace, cannot fix, cannot make perfect. Nothing is perfect. You are not perfect. So don’t drag around that little jar, the transparent jar of your imperfections for the world to see, for you to see as a constant reminder of the ways you’ve failed. Forget the jar. Forget how you’ve always been defined by it and define yourself by something new. Throw it down. Shatter it. Watch it fall and break and crush into a thousand tiny pieces and celebrate that change hurts, and that growth sucks. But now you are free falling, and it is terrifying, but terribly freeing.

Marisa Donnelly

Marisa is a writer, poet, & editor. She is the author of Somewhere On A Highway , a poetry collection on self-discovery, growth, love, loss and the challenges of becoming.

Keep up with Marisa on Instagram , Twitter , Amazon and marisadonnelly.com

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Its never too late

Its never too late

Grammar mistakes

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Imagine getting out of high school and being faced with the grim responsibility of havingto get a job. If you’re one of the fortunate, you have the option to continue your education andpostpone the reality of growing up. Now let’s assume you’ve found that so-called dream job,paying your dues with hard work and late nights, not to mention weekends and holidays.

Aftertwenty to thirty years you’re up for retirement and it sounds inviting. Now most employers offera retirement package that allows you to stop working and still bring home seventy percent of yourcurrent income. As stated, “Five Steps to a Great Retirement” (Money Magazine 1999), “Nomatter how far you are from retirement, you know that the alternative to work is no longernapping on the verandah. Back in the days when it was, financial advisers routinely said youcould retire comfortably on seventy percent your working income – figuring you were thirtypercent dead.

ready to help you now

Without paying upfront

” So how much money will you need when you retire? In the following pages thereis some helpful information you will need to make the “Golden Years” truly golden. Education is the single most important tool in planing for your future, the earlier thebetter. This is a validity supported by the facts stated in the article “Saving is Fundamental”(Black Enterprise 1999). “As part of it’s 1999 “Time to Save Education” campaign, MerrillLynch polled 500 boys and girls, ages twelve to seventeen, about how they obtain, save and investtheir money.

The survey found that seventy percent of them currently have savings accounts (upfrom sixty five in 1998) and eleven percent own stock (vs. seven percent last year). Nearly onethird of the teens consulted parents or relatives for guidance. Fifty six percent (vs.

forty four in1998) of the students had taken a class on saving or investing.” The article also points out,“Despite the fact that teens who take such classes are more likely to manage their money wisely,the number of states offering personal finance, dwindled from fourteen in 1989 to only seven lastIt is essential that children take these classes. Sixty percent of high school students haveaccess to these personal finance programs but a meager twenty-one percent have signed up. Eventhough some schools offer these personal finance type classes, if you were to compare the kidswho haven’t taken the classes to those who have, you would discover that they have theinformation needed, yet their spending habits, are very similar.

Considering that nearly thirtypercent rely on credit card budgets, this could pose a problem. Considering that most of the cardholders carry a debt from month to month.”As a direct result, Arthur Levitt, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is sendingregulators into classrooms nationwide to “Get students and young adults excited about saving fortomorrow.” Some find it hard to believe that one lecture from a expert will have any impact onthe kids today.

The kids want to learn but who is going to teach them? Hence, this is whereparents must education their children. What better way to teach your children then by example. We all know that kids learn more by doing rather than listening. Fortunately, there are some basicfundamentals you can teach your kids.

In “Kids and Money” (Money Magazine 1999), byfollowing these guidelines you can instill the skills so many Americans lack today. (1) “Set aregular payday.” An allowance should come the same day every week to help kids budget. (2)“A chance to earn more.

” Other than everyday chores to earn some extra money. (3) “Set up abank account.” Many banks still have low minimum-balance passbooks accounts which allowsyour kids to see the interest grow. (4) “Room to stumble.

” Kids need to learn that money isfinite. That is why, when they blow their budget, and they will, you need to be strong enough notIn the article named “Five steps to a Great Retirement” by Lisa Really Cullen, BeverlyGoodman, and Henry Weil (Money Magazine 1999). “There is helpful information from gettingstarted to withdrawing wisely. Let us take an overview of the suggested five steps involved inplanning your retirement.

Step one is to see where you stand. To figure out where you’re goingyou need to know where you are. It’s not always easy to keep track of your retirement stake,even if you collect account statements like your kids hoard Poke`mon cards. It makes sense toadd up your retirement assets once a year, no more, no less.

The markets are volatile and yourtotals can jump from week to week. But obsessing over every blip in the market could drive younuts. All that you need to know is that your on course.” The article goes on to explain, “First, round up the accounts clearly labeled for use in retirement namely, your4O1 or other employer sponsored options: Individual RetirementAccounts and any accounts for self-employed individuals, add the stocks, bonds and mutual fundsin accounts that aren’t tax protected but that you’ve earmarked for retirement.

”Furthermore the reading states, “Despite all the scary talk about the system goingbankrupt, you’ll probably get money from Social Security and perhaps from a traditional definedbenefit pension provided by your employer. To get an estimate of how much your pension will beworth, ask your benefice office if you haven’t received a mailing detailing your projected SocialSecurity benefit, request a copy of your personal earnings and benefits estimate from1(800)772-1213 or on the Internet at www.ssa.gov.

Finally, you’ll probably heard that fewerretirees are actually retiring these days according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics more than halfof men age sixty two still work last year.”“Step two: Set The Right Goal. Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the moremoney you live on while you’re employed, the more you’re likely to spend when you retire. Onceyour free from the office, you’re likely to spend more than ever on entertainment, hobbies andtravel.

Obviously, no single formula for planning a retirement budget works for everyone. Financial advisors report that nearly all retirees need to revise their budgets twelve months afterthe quit work what they had anticipated. Your best bet in planning is to start by figuring thatyou’ll need today. Let’s say you want your money to last for twenty years, which is the averagelife expectancy at Sixty five.

If you keep earning an after tax return of seven percent on yourportfolio while you’re tapping it you can spend about nine percent of your initial stake every year. Step Three: Shape your strategy, the article goes on to say. You know where you are and whereyou’re trying to go. Now all you need to do is figure out is how to get there, for road maps, lookno further than the Internet.

Thanks to some new, easy to use online tools, the task of devising aretirement strategy has become much easier. If “getting online” ranks just under “retirement planning” on your list of things to do before theNext Millennium, sweat not– real, live financial planners offer similar services, as do brokers and “One strategy used by many financial professionals use to help the average person fordeciding where to put your money to obtain the full earning potential is to use the “Rule ofThis rule states that you take the average return percentage of your investment and divide thatnumber into seventy two. This will give you the amount of years it will take for your money todouble. For example if the return of a $10,000 investment is at six percent, take that number anddivide it into seventy two, you would end up with twelve.

This means that every twelve years theinvestment will double to $20,000. At this rate, the initial investment will reach $80,000. Soundsgood doesn’t, not if you compare it to the return at twelve percent. Which will mean that theinvestment will double every six years.

Where the return after thirty six years is $640,000 on theinitial $10,000 investment.” (See Diagram Below) 72 DIVIDED BY THE INVESTMENT DOUBLING PERIOD = INVESTMENT DOUBLING PERIOD DOUBLING PERIOD YEARSDOUBLING PERIOD YEARSYR 0$10,000YR 0 $ 10,000 YR 12$ 20,000YR 6 $ 20,000YR 24$ 40,000YR 12$ 40,000YR 36$ 80,000YR 18$ 80,000 DIFFERENCE: $560,000 The article goes on to state that you must make your money work for you. “When itcomes to investing your retirement stash, you’ve often heard about the critical importance of assetallocation, the task of spreading your money among several different types of investments toincrease your returns and reduce your risks.” “Only stocks can give you the growth you need to stay ahead of inflation and taxes.

Andwhile stocks are subject to wild swings, most retirement investors have the time to ride outmarket downturns and reap the long-term rewards that equities promise.” The article goes on to say that the last step is to spend your money wisely. When possibleuse cash instead of credit. This will allow you to use your money to accumilate interest ratherTo finalize what I have written, retirement is something that is a must! When we reachage 65 we must have enough money to live comfortably on.

If we don’t, we will end up infinancial destitution. Parents need to begin to take control of their spending patterns so that theirkids will begin to learn the basic fundamentals of saving money. Once children begin to save theirmoney as they earn, they will create a pattern in their mind that will continue on for the rest oftheir lives. When these children have children they will instill in their minds the same philosophy,save money for retirement! One of the most interesting quotes to substantiate this claim comesform the book The Richest Man in Babylon.

It says “proper preparation is the key to oursuccess.” Another quote from this great novel says “a mans wealth is not in the purse he carries. A fat purse quickly empties if there is no golden stream to refill it.” People who work today anddo not make it a point to save for tomorrow are digging their own financial grave.

Suppose afamily makes a great deal of money and have a high consumption lifestyle and no savings, thehusband loses his job and now the family’s income is cut in half. Because the family hasn’t saved

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The Late Paper Case Study

Social psychology

Of the six people named in the case study `The Late Paper,` Kim is the person most responsible for her failing grade in Psychology 101. Kim was chosen to be the most responsible for her own failing grade because she is the only one who has control over her own actions. Therefore, she is the only

Compare and Contrast Early and Late Marriage

Child marriage

Marriage is an inevitable stage of our life. However, people debate over the pros and cons of early marriage and late marriage. Some people get married early just because of their environment and culture. Some have to marry their partner due to pregnancy or other social issues. In some parts of the world, people focus

Suicide In The Late 1800

′ S As It Relates To The Protagonist In Kate Chopin ’ s The Awakening Essay, Research Paper Suicide by Artists in the Late nineteenth century In the nineteenth century behavioral and societal jobs such as jobs in the place, intense concerns, wretchedness and alcoholism were among some of the grounds for creative persons to perpetrate self-destruction.

The competitive Advantage of First mover and Late Mover

Competition

Competitive Advantage

Presents due to engineering promotion, the manner of how concerns were conducted has evolved to be more globally attributed and reliable to technological invention AIDSs. Furthermore, engineering could assist a house to be sustained by holding competitory advantage, and this particularly true in the state of affairs of where house had the strong dependence towards

Changing Cities Research Paper The late

Civilization

Immigration

Changing Cities Essay, Research Paper The late 1800 ’ s were a clip of altering of in-migration, transit, and authorities, which in bend changed metropoliss to a drastic sum. Immigration played a large portion in altering the civilization of the metropoliss into their ain alone civilization for every metropolis. Transportation let the people still be connected

The Early, the Late, and the Viral

The early viral proteins deal with the replication of viral DNA, they re then transported back into the nucleus. Once in the nucleus the proteins become involved in making multiply copies of the viral DNA, using host DNA polymerase. The copies of viral genome act as a template for transcription into late morn, which leaves

Humanities in the Early, High And Late Middle Ages

Charlemagne

Before delving into the topic of humanities, it is essential to establish their definition as the study of human beings, encompassing their culture and self-expression. The purpose of this discussion is to examine how humanities portray changing perspectives on nature and humanity throughout history. Currently, there is a lack of awareness among many individuals regarding

essay it never too late

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IMAGES

  1. Kody Keplinger Quote: “It’s never too late.”

    essay it never too late

  2. Never Too Late by Joseph T. Renaldi

    essay it never too late

  3. It's never too late to go after your dreams. Here's why...

    essay it never too late

  4. Nicholas Sparks Quote: “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”

    essay it never too late

  5. George Eliot Quote: “It is never too late to be what you might have

    essay it never too late

  6. "It is never too late to give up your prejudices." ~ Henry David

    essay it never too late

COMMENTS

  1. Free Essay: It's Never Too Late

    389 Words 1 Page Analyze This Draft It's Never Too Late View Writing Issues File Tools Settings Filter Results I've always been the student who made decent grades and yet never participated in any extracurricular activities. I danced for a couple of years when I was younger, but as I grew older, I became shy.

  2. "It is Never Too Late" Essay

    Melissa Shafer Professor Ashbourne College writing 22 October 2020 It is Never Too Late Lisa Nichols' "3 Sentences That Will Change Your Life" text is a motivational speech to encourage others to keep fighting. ... "It is Never Too Late" Essay. Course: College Writing I (WRIT 105) 204 Documents. Students shared 204 documents in this ...

  3. It's Never Too Late To Be What You Might Have Been

    It is never too late to be what you might have been. This popular saying has been printed on refrigerator magnets, posters, shirts, and key chains. But I have never seen the source specified. Are these really the words of George Eliot? Quote Investigator: George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans who died in 1880.

  4. Why It's Never Too Late to Change Your Life and Live Differently

    It's Never Too Late - Three Roadblocks Holding You Back 1. I'm Too Old to Start As the saying goes, "age is just a number," and it's actually just a measurement of time lived. We often associate our age as a timeline for our goals. I want to move to the city by 25. I want to have a successful business by 30. I want to own a house by 35.

  5. Lesson of the Day: Inspiration From The Times's 'It's Never Too Late

    It's Never Too Late to Climb That Mountain. Dierdre Wolownick, whose son, Alex Honnold, is one of the world's top rock climbers, ascended Yosemite's El Capitan to celebrate her 70th birthday ...

  6. It's Never too Late to Start Over

    $0.00 It's Never too Late to Start Over Kim - Atlanta, Georgia As a matter of course, I believe that it's never too late to start your life over again. New beginnings and happy endings have always allowed […] As a matter of course, I believe that it's never too late to start your life over again.

  7. 'It's never too late'

    Meaning This proverb, "it's never too late", means that 'it does not matter how late it is, a person should always take the opportunity to pursue their goals'. It means that: there is always time to start what we wanted to start, there is always time to pick up again something that we had stopped doing.

  8. I Believe That it is Never Too Late

    Explore. Featured Essays Essays on the Radio; Special Features; 1950s Essays Essays From the 1950s Series; Browse by Theme Browse Essays By Theme Use this feature to browse through the tens of thousands of essays that have been submitted to This I Believe. Select a theme to see a listing of essays that address the selected theme. The number to the right of each theme indicates how many essays ...

  9. It's Never Too Late Free Essay Example

    23699 I've always been the student who made decent grades and yet never participated in any extracurricular activities. I danced for a couple of years when I was younger, but as I grew older, I became shy. When I got to high school, I became distracted and my grades starting declining.

  10. never too late to learn, give your reason and discusss

    It's never too late for you to start a new journey in your education. I completely agree this opinion. In this essay, I am going to discuss the reasons for that To begin with, there are a variety of reasons why children are required to attend high school according to the law enacted by the government.

  11. Why It's Not Too Late to Learn New Skills

    January 11, 2021 The joys—and occasional embarrassments—of being a novice could be an antidote to the strain of being a perfectionist. Animation by Luke Wohlgemuth Among the things I have not...

  12. Expansion of an Idea / Proverb

    The proverb "It's never too late to mend" suggests that no matter how difficult or hopeless a situation or relationship may seem, it is always possible to repair or improve it. This phrase implies that it is never too late to make amends, seek forgiveness, or take steps to resolve a conflict. The proverb emphasizes the importance of ...

  13. Essay on Better Late Than Never

    In conclusion, "Better Late Than Never" is a wise saying. It teaches us to not give up even if we are late. It tells us that it's never too late to do the right thing. 250 Words Essay on Better Late Than Never Introduction. The phrase "Better Late Than Never" is an old saying that teaches us about the value of time.

  14. It's Never Too Late To Study

    Flexible schedule. The biggest misconception about studying - especially if you're an adult with a career - is that there's no time to keep up with studying and fulfil your work tasks. With online learning, you can learn at a pace that is comfortable for you and doesn't disrupt your work. These days, all you need is a stable internet ...

  15. Free Essay: Never Too Late To Learn

    Essay #1 14 May 2008 Never Too Late to Learn There's an old saying: You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Well, most of the time, whenever I've heard it, the one saying it has been an older person who's trying to explain why they can't, or rather, won't learn something new.

  16. It's Never Too Late

    This is not a race y'all. I don't care if you're 21, 65, or 102—it's never too late to start making art. Claude Monet didn't begin painting until mid-life. He painted a little in his 30's but didn't fully discover his inimitable artistic style until his 40's. Most of the paintings you would recognize by Monet were done in his ...

  17. It is Never Too Late to Begin Once Again

    It is Never Too Late to Begin Once Again To err is human. We often slip-up and make mistakes. All of us have our moments of weakness. We commit errors or careless acts which we live to regret later More than the adults such acts are more common, especially in young boys and girls. They drift aimlessly without giving a thought to the future.

  18. Never Too Late To Learn Free Essay Example

    Never Too Late To Learn Free Essay Example Never Too Late To Learn Categories: Different Learning Styles Education Learning My Learning Style Nursing Returning To College Teacher Download Essay, Pages 7 (1701 words) Views 5067 There's an old saying: You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

  19. It's Never Too Late To Start Over

    Self-Improvement It's Never Too Late To Start Over By Marisa Donnelly Updated November 19, 2019 Table of Contents It's never too late to start over. To hit the pause button. Breathe. Then begin again. You don't need to lose yourself in the shuffle, get caught up in your mistakes and your fears and your anxieties.

  20. Never To Late Essay

    Never To Late Essay 1639 Words 7 Pages Many older students are making their way back to school The number of older, more "nontraditional" college students are growing. These students say that maturity and life experience give them a clear advantage in the college classroom, and many advisors agree.

  21. Its never too late to change

    Its never too late to change Nghia - Burlington, Vermont I believe that it's never too late to change. Regretting things that I had done shouldn't happen in the past. Nghia Duong is the name and […] I believe that it's never too late to change. Regretting things that I had done shouldn't happen in the past.

  22. Its never too late

    Get help on 【 Its never too late 】 on Graduateway A huge assortment of FREE essays & assignments Find an idea for your paper! Get help now. Essay Samples. Menu; ... Changing Cities Essay, Research Paper The late 1800 ' s were a clip of altering of in-migration, transit, and authorities, which in bend changed metropoliss to a drastic sum. ...

  23. It Was Too Late

    I was calling her every night before I went to sleep, and I was spending more time with her. I was maturing, and I was discovering what it meant to love unconditionally. It was too late, though. She was gone before my birthday, and my best friend and I never made it over for a swim. It took me too long to realize that this woman was my mother ...