The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before they come to a standstill... The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be while you still live.

Holmes uses the image of a horse race to argue that life and work do not end abruptly at a single “goal.” Even after a decisive moment—success, achievement, retirement, or the completion of a task—there is a necessary “finishing canter,” a period of continued motion in which one’s energies and responsibilities taper rather than cease. The final line sharpens the point: true standstill is death; as long as one is alive, one remains in motion—thinking, choosing, acting, and bearing consequences. The metaphor reflects Holmes’s characteristic pragmatism: human life is process, not a series of neat endpoints, and the ethical demand is to keep moving forward rather than treating any milestone as final rest.