Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? Gian Carlo Menotti? John Greenleaf Whittier? Adelaide Anne Procter? Norman Cousins? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: Looking back on one’s life sometimes produces a surge of regret for lost opportunities. Here are two versions of a statement expressing this feeling:
(1) Hell begins the day God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.
(2) Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved . . . of all that we might have done which we did not do.
This notion has been attributed to the major German literary figure Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but I have never seen a solid citation, and I am skeptical. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: QI has found no evidence that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe crafted this saying.
The earliest match located by QI appeared in “The Saturday Review of Literature” which printed remarks delivered by Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti at New York City’s Town Hall in March 1950. Menotti spoke about his conception of Hell. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.
The poet shall forever scream the poems which he never wrote; the painter will be forever obsessed by visions of the pictures which he did not paint . . .
Menotti summarized his viewpoint with the following line:
For me the conception of hell lies in two words: TOO LATE.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1856 poet John Greenleaf Whittier published a poem titled “Maud Muller” which included thematically related lines about the anguish of unrealized possibilities:2
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
In 1859 Adelaide Anne Procter published a poem titled “The Ghost in the Picture Room” which included a couplet expressing a different and more optimistic opinion:3
No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been.
In May 1950 Norman Cousins who was the editor of “The Saturday Review of Literature” reprinted the remark of Menotti:4
GIAN-CARLO MENOTTI came up with an intriguing personal definition of hell a few weeks ago at New York’s Town Hall. Mr. Menotti said that “hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do … For me, the conception of hell lies in two words: ‘too late.’”
In June 1950 “Quote: The Weekly Digest” printed the quotation ascribed to Menotti while presenting a citation which pointed to the passage above from Norman Cousins.5
In September 1950 “The Reader’s Digest” published the following item:6
Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.
—Gian-Carlo Menotti, quoted in The Saturday Review of Literature
In 1959 “Dale Carnegie’s Scrapbook: A Treasury of the Wisdom of the Ages” included the quotation with an attribution to Menotti.7
In 1968 “The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life” included the quotation with an attribution to Menotti.8
In 1988 “Webster’s New World Dictionary of Quotable Definitions” included the quotation with an attribution to Menotti:9
Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do. For me, the conception of hell lies in two words: “too late.” Gian-Carlo Menotti
In 1998 a columnist in the “Tallahassee Democrat” of Florida attributed a version of the quotation to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The version used the word “you” instead of “us”:10
“Hell begins the day that God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done and would have done, but did not do.”—Goethe
In 2006 Mark Batterson published “In a Pit With a Lion On a Snowy Day”, and he attributed an instance to Goethe:11
When everything is said and done, I think our greatest regrets will be the God-ordained risks we didn’t take. We won’t regret sinking. We will regret sitting. In the words of German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Hell begins the day God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.”
In conclusion, Gian Carlo Menotti deserves credit for the remarks he spoke at New York City’s Town Hall in March 1950. There is no substantive support for the attribution of the closely matching statement to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who died in 1832. Goethe received credit by 1998.
Image Notes: Illustration of an incomplete puzzle from geralt Pixabay. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgements: Great thanks to goofy_1_goofy and Fake History Hunter whose inquiries led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1950 April 22, The Saturday Review of Literature, Volume 33, Number 16, My Conception of Hell by Gian-Carlo Menotti, (Editor’s Note: Menotti gave his conception of hell at Town Hall in New York City on March 20, 1950), Quote Page 29, Column 2, Saturday Review Associates, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1856, The Panorama, and Other Poems by John G.
Whittier (John Greenleaf Whittier), Poem: Maud
Muller, Start Page 127, Quote Page 132 and 133, Ticknor and Fields, Boston, Massachusetts. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎ - 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 numbers, Christmas 1859), The Ghost in the Picture Room by Adelaide Anne Procter, Start, Page 19, Quote Page 21, Column 2, Published at Number 11, Wellington Street, North, London. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1950 May 27, The Saturday Review of Literature, Volume 33, Number 21, Where Hell Begins by N. C. (Norman Cousins), Quote Page 22, Column 1, Saturday Review Associates, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1950 June 18, Quote: The Weekly Digest, Volume 19, Number 25, Topic: Achievement Failure, Quote Page 2, Column 1, Published by Droke House, Indianapolis, Indiana. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1950 September, The Reader’s Digest, Volume 57, Number 341, (Filler item), Quote Page 118, The Reader’s Digest Association, Pleasantville, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
- 1959, Dale Carnegie’s Scrapbook: A Treasury of the Wisdom of the Ages, Edited by Dorothy Carnegie with writings by Dale Carnegie, Quote Page 183, Published by Dale Carnegie and Associates, Garden City, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1968, The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life by Forbes Magazine, Quote Page 503, Published by Forbes, Inc., New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
- 1988, Webster’s New World Dictionary of Quotable Definitions, Edited by Eugene E. Brussell, Second Edition, Section: Hell, Quote Page 253, Column 1, Webster’s New World, New
York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎ - 1998 September 7, Tallahassee Democrat, Many of us procrastinate, rationalize by Jeff Herring (Mental Health), Quote Page 1D, Column 5, Tallahassee, Florida. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 2006, In a Pit With a Lion On a Snowy Day by Mark Batterson, Chapter 6: Playing It Safe Is Risky, Quote Page 114, Multnomah Books, Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Verified with scans) ↩︎