"A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an old French sentence says, "God works in moments," — "En peu d'heure Dieu labeure." We ask for long life, but 't is deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical. Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance, — what ample borrowers of eternity they are! Life culminates and concentrates; and Homer said, "The Gods ever give to mortals their appointed share of reason only on one day.""
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Academics from the United StatesPhilosophers from the United States19th-century philosophersRomantic poetsEssayists from the United States
Original Language: English
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Works and Days
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 – 1882
US-amerikanischer Philosoph und Dichter
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