“Life is like that. You live it forward but understand it backward.”

—  Abraham Verghese , book Cutting for Stone

Variant: You live it forward, but understand it backward.
Source: Cutting for Stone

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Abraham Verghese photo
Abraham Verghese 20
Physician, teacher, novelist 1955

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Journals IV A 164 (1843)
See Phenomenology: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, by Dermot Moran (2002)
Variants:
We live forward, but we understand backward.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

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