Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Interpretation
Let go of daily mistakes and approach each new day with a fresh perspective.
This quote emphasizes the importance of concluding each day by reflecting on what has happened, acknowledging both accomplishments and mistakes without lingering on them. Emerson encourages embracing a new day as an opportunity to start afresh, promoting a mindset that fosters resilience and optimism for the future.
In practice
In a motivational speech to encourage people to overcome their failures.
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?
One of the things I learned, the easiest of lessons, was that the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be.
You can be a decent critic if you know about food, but to be a really good one, you need to know about life.
Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.
No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.
Indecision may come from an instinctive hunch that there's more you need to know - which means it's time to learn everything you can about the pros and cons of each option. You can continue on this track, however, only as long as you're unearthing genuinely new information.
Behaving like a princess is work. It's not just about looking beautiful or wearing a crown. It's more about how you are inside.
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