"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor."
— Mark Twain
Twenty Years From Now You Will
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
About this quote
This passage was not written by Twain. Quote Investigator and the Center for Mark Twain Studies both confirm it has no connection to his work. The actual source is H. Jackson Brown Jr., who published it in P.S. I Love You (1990) crediting his mother, Sarah Frances Brown. The misattribution to Twain appears to have solidified by the mid-1990s, spread partly by a New Yorker advertisement in 1998. Scholars also note Twain — an experienced river pilot — would never have misused the nautical term "bowlines" to mean a docking line.
Source
Attributed, widely quoted
