“The early bird catches the worm; a stitch in time saves nine....He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we haven't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to 'seize the day'. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves....We have to make our own mistakes....We have to learn our own lessons....We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping....And that even the biggest failure, even the worst most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.”
— Dr. Meredith Grey, Grey's Anatomy, Season 1: If Tomorrow Never Comes
Tagged: Benjamin Franklin, early bird, Seize The Day
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter

Grey's Anatomy

Explore more quotes:

Beach Quotes (42)
Deep Quotes (500)
Encouraging Quotes (30)
Funny Quotes (120)
Inspirational Quotes (501)
Quotes about Love (854)
TV Quotes (1,000+)
Movie Quotes (1,000+)

About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.