A Literary Prescription for

Second Chances

For beginning again when the first plan has fallen through.

A second chance rarely feels like a gift at the time. It usually arrives disguised as a loss: the end of a job, a marriage, a whole version of your life you thought was settled. And yet the blank page, frightening as it is, is also freedom. It is the rare chance to choose again, with everything you have learned since the first time. These books and poems are for anyone standing at that uncertain, hopeful threshold, wondering whether it is really possible to start over. It is.

Books Poetry Quotes & Prose

Books

Prescribed reading

Some of these are wise non-fiction on the work of rebuilding after loss, and some are novels of lives remade against the odds. Fiction and non-fiction alike, they share one steadying message: that a first chance lost is not the end of the story, and that the second attempt is often the one that finally fits.

Option B

Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant · 2017

Written after Sandberg lost her husband suddenly, this is a clear-eyed, compassionate guide to facing adversity and building resilience when your first plan for life is gone. Grant brings the psychology, Sandberg the raw experience, and together they make a hopeful case: that a second version of your life, an Option B, can still be deeply worth living. Practical and steadying.

“When Option A is not available… let’s kick the hell out of Option B.”

Falling Upward

Richard Rohr · 2011

Rohr argues that the first half of life is about building an identity, and the second is about something deeper, and that the fall which ends the first half is often the doorway to the second. It is a wise, spacious book for anyone whose old life has come apart, offering a way to see the collapse not as an ending but as the start of a truer chapter.

Broken Open

Elizabeth Lesser · 2004

Lesser gathers stories, her own and others’, of people whose lives were shattered and who used the breaking to grow rather than to close. Her central image is bracing and hopeful: that hard times can either break us down or break us open. For anyone standing in the wreckage of a first chance, it is a warm, wise companion toward the second.

Silas Marner

George Eliot · 1861

A bitter, broken weaver, robbed and long ago wronged, has his solitary life transformed when an orphaned child wanders into his cottage. It is the gentlest of second-chance stories, about how love can arrive late and unlooked-for and remake a life thought finished. Short, warm and quietly moving, it is proof in fiction that it is never too late to begin again.

The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett · 1911

A sour, unloved child and a hidden, neglected garden bring each other slowly back to life. It is a children’s classic that adults return to for a reason: it is really about renewal, about how tending something, and being tended, can heal what seemed beyond repair. A green, hopeful book for anyone ready to let a new season begin.

Quote Therapy

Georgia Clare

Georgia Clare’s own book, and the one this whole site grew from. It pairs great quotations with stories of people who acted on a line at exactly the right moment and changed their direction, which is what a second chance asks of all of us. A warm, hopeful companion for beginning again. Newly revised and expanded.

Poems about second chances

For beginning again

from “Maud Muller”

John Greenleaf Whittier, 1856

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’

Whittier’s famous couplet names the ache that makes a second chance so precious: the grief of the road not taken, the life that might have been. But the poem is really a warning against living there. Better to take the chance in front of you now than to spend your days mourning the one you let pass.

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from “A Psalm of Life”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1838

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Longfellow wrote a rallying cry against despair and passivity, an insistence that the past need not decide the future. It is a poem for the morning you decide to begin again: heart braced, no guarantees, simply up and doing. Old-fashioned and unashamedly hopeful, and exactly the fuel a fresh start sometimes needs.

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“New Every Morning”

Susan Coolidge, 1870s

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,
And puzzles forecasted and possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.

Coolidge offers the simplest, kindest version of a second chance: that every single morning is one, that yesterday’s failures do not have to be carried forward, that you may always take heart and begin again. It is a poem to keep by the bed, for the days when starting over feels like too much. You only have to begin one more time.

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from “The Flower”

George Herbert, 1633

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing.
…Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Herbert, after a long dark season of the soul, feels himself unexpectedly coming back to life, budding again in age, relishing the world after thinking himself finished. It is one of the most beautiful poems ever written about renewal, about the astonishment of a second spring you did not believe would come. Proof that the ground is never as dead as it looks.

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Quotes & Prose

Quotes about second chances to keep

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

Japanese proverb

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It is never too late to be what you might have been.

George Eliot

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You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

C. S. Lewis

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Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

J. K. Rowling

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The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

Socrates

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From Georgia

Choosing the next chapter

A practice for hearing what is genuinely right for you, and an essay on picturing the life you want and taking the first steps toward it.

Morning Mindfulness: Intention Setting

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A short morning practice for setting a clear, kind intention, a quiet way to begin again, one day at a time.

Listen Now For Free

How to Tell What’s Really Meant for You

A short talk by Georgia Clare

A quiet practice for the crossroads, helping you sense which of the paths in front of you is truly yours to take.

Listen Now For Free

Use Your Imagination to Create a Better Future

Personal essay by Georgia Clare · The Library

On the quiet, practical power of picturing the life you want, and taking the first small steps toward becoming the person who lives it.

Read the Essay →

The 21-Day Meditation Course

Guided Meditation Course · Georgia Clare

Three weeks of short, guided meditations to help you build a calm, steady daily practice, one day at a time.

Start the 21-Day Course →

Questions people ask

Reading for Second Chances

Where should I start?

If you only read one thing, start with Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. It is a clear, compassionate book about building a good life after the one you planned has fallen through, which is what a second chance really is. And if you would rather have a story, Silas Marner is the loveliest of second-chance novels. The poems below are worth a look too.

Is it too late for a second chance?

The books here would say almost certainly not. Falling Upward is about the second half of life becoming truer than the first, and Broken Open is about how our hardest breaks can crack us open to something better. A second chance is rarely a return to the old life. It is usually the start of a truer one.

Which quotes about second chances are worth keeping?

Quotes worth keeping include “Although no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” (Carl Bard), “Every day is a new beginning.” and “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” (Japanese proverb). You will find these and more in the quotes section above.

Can reading really help me start over?

It genuinely can. Starting again is frightening mostly because it feels lonely and uncertain, as though no one has stood where you are standing. Reading people who began again, in fiction and in life, quietly disproves that. They show you it has been done, many times, and that the second attempt is often the one that finally fits.

Second Chances

Prescribed reading

For beginning again

Quotes about second chances to keep

Choosing the next chapter

Reading for Second Chances

Where should I start?

Is it too late for a second chance?

Which quotes about second chances are worth keeping?

Can reading really help me start over?

More prescriptions await.