This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
Interpretation
Emerson emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment and cherishing today rather than dwelling on the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the value of the present day, encouraging individuals to appreciate the opportunities and joys it brings. He suggests that today is precious and filled with hope, implying that one should not let regret over the past diminish the significance of the current moment. By calling attention to the idea that each day holds potential invitations for new experiences, he advocates for a mindful approach to life, focusing on what can be done now rather than lamenting what has been lost.
In practice
In a motivational speech about mindfulness, one might say: 'As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, this day is all that is good and fair, so letβs embrace it fully.'
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
The river of truth is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream.
I have become convinced that the more wealth a country accumulates, the more isolated and lonely its people become. The loneliest are usually the children and the elderly. Children learn what they live, and isolation in the βvillageβ is one of the most destructive messages we daily write on the tablets of their hearts.
The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature -were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.
We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.
We ... must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow.
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