This thought is beautifully elaborated in the following allegory: 

“It was midnight of the new year, and an aged man stood thoughtfully at the window.  He gazed with a long, despairing look, upon the fixed, eternal, and glorious heaven, and down upon the silent, still, and snow-white earth, whereon was none so joyless, so sleepless as he.  For his grave stood open near him; it was covered only with the snows of age, not decked with the green of youth; and he brought with him, from a long and rich life, nothing save errors, crimes, and sickness—­a wasted body, a desolate soul, a breast filled with poison, and an old age heavy with repentance and sorrow.  The fair days of his youth at this hour, arose like spectres before his mind, and carried him back to the bright morning, when his father had first planted him at the starting-point of life; whence, to the right, the way conducts along the sunny path of virtue, to a wide and peaceful land, a land of light, rich in the harvest of good deeds, and full of the joy of angels; whilst, to the left, the road descends to the molehills of vice, toward a dark cavern, full of poisonous droppings, stinging serpents, and dank and steaming mists.

“The serpents clung around his breast, and the drops of poison lay upon his tongue, and he knew not where he was.

“Senseless and in unutterable anguish, his cry went forth to heaven:  ’Grant me but youth again!  O, father, place me but once again upon the starting-point of life, that I may choose otherwise!’

“But his father and his youth were far away.  He beheld wandering lights dance upon the marshes, and disappear upon the graveyards; and he exclaimed, ‘These are my days of folly!’

“He beheld a star shoot through the heaven, and vanish:  it glimmered as it fell, and disappeared upon the earth.  ‘Such, too, am I!’ whispered his bleeding heart; and the serpent-tooth of remorse struck afresh into its wounds.

“His heated fancy pictured to him night-wandering forms slow-creeping upon the house-tops; the windmill raised its arm, and threatened to fell him to the earth; and in the tenantless house of death, the only remaining mask assumed imperceptibly his own features.

“At once, in the midst of this delirium, the sounds from the steeple, welcoming the new year, fell upon his ear, like distant church music.

“He was moved, but to a gentler mood.  He gazed around, unto the horizon, and looked forth upon the wide earth; and he thought of the friends of his youth, who, happier and better than he, were now teachers upon the earth, fathers of happy children, and blessed each in his condition.

“’Alas! and I, too, like ye, might now be sleeping peacefully and tearless through this first night of the year, had I willed so!  I too might have been happy, ye dear parents, had I fulfilled your new-year’s wishes and admonitions!’

“In the feverish reminiscences of his youth, it seemed to him as if the mask which had assumed his features in the house of death arose, and grew into a living youth, and his former blooming figure stood before him in the bitter mockery of illusion.