Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
Interpretation
Choose from the blessings you have and find contentment in them.
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing and choosing from the positive aspects of life that are available to us. It suggests that true happiness and fulfillment come not from seeking more than we have, but from appreciating what is already present in our lives and finding contentment within those choices.
In practice
During a motivational speech about gratitude, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of appreciating present blessings.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
Beauty and love pass, I know... Oh, there's sadness, too. I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses-
You can make yourself happy or miserable - it's the same amount of effort.
Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.
How would you know what happy is if you've never been otherwise.
To laugh often and much ... this is to have succeeded. Probably not from Emerson: here's the full quotation and the story.
I know what I want, I know where I'm going and I'm happy with what I am.
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