I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now.
What's quietly radical here is the *arithmetic* of Grellet's plea—he's not asking for grand gestures or lifetime commitments, but rather insisting that the present moment contains the entire moral weight we'll ever possess. Most people defer kindness until they feel more secure, more accomplished, more ready, but Grellet cuts through that procrastination by making scarcity (one life, one passing through) into urgency. When you sit with an elderly relative who's begun repeating the same stories, or when a colleague mentions a quiet struggle, the quote stops being sentimental and becomes a small blade: you are the good that can happen to them *now*, not next year or when you've sorted your own life out. The wisdom lies not in charity but in recognizing that hesitation itself is a form of waste.