In the poem "Don't Quit," what do these lines mean? "Life is queer with its twists and turns, As every one of us sometimes learns."

“Don’t Quit,” by Edgar A. Guest, is a motivational poem. Its four stanzas encourage the reader to keep on going and to make progress toward a goal, even if a situation seems impossible or insurmountable. The motivating narrator implies that everyone has experienced such times, and many have come through them successfully. It’s a good poem to read when you’re feeling down, depressed, or overwhelmed by some problem. You are not alone in feeling this way. For many centuries, others have been in these situations and have survived.

The second stanza begins: “Life is queer with its twists and turns, / As everyone of us sometimes learns …” The key words here are “queer” and “sometimes.” Since Edgar Guest lived at the turn of the last century, he uses the word “queer” to mean “odd” or “strange.” Life doesn’t proceed as if it were a flat, straight road. It has twists and turns in it. (Guest is quietly using the road image as a metaphor for life, without using the word “road.”) Then comes that follow-up line, “As everyone of us sometimes learns.” Does every person learn that life can be complicated, all the time, in every instance? No. According to Guest, “everyone of us sometimes learns.” In other words: sometimes we learn that life has challenges, and sometimes we don’t remember this fact. The implication is that the successful folks are the ones who learn from past events and mistakes and who proceed anyway, knowing that success surely must lie ahead.