The aster has not wasted ...

The aster has not wasted spring and summer because it has not blossomed. It has been all the time preparing for what is to follow, and in autumn it is the glory of the field, and only the frost lays it low. So there are many people who must live forty or fifty years, and have the crude sap of their natural dispositions changed and sweetened before the blossoming time can come; but their lives have not been wasted.
The aster has not wasted spring and summer because it has not blossomed. It has been all the time preparing for what is to follow, and in autumn it is the glory of the field, and only the frost lays it low. So there are many people who must live forty or fifty years, and have the crude sap of their natural dispositions changed and sweetened before the blossoming time can come; but their lives have not been wasted.
 Henry Ward Beecher

Quotes from the same author

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
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 Henry Ward Beecher
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.
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We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
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There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
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No man can tell another his faults so as to benefit him, unless he loves him.
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