The days...come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

perfectly said every day is a gift

Time and tide wait for none!!!

One day is an atom of life, basic building block of it all... Though I like friendly parties as well, darling.

live every moment to the fullest

The context, from THE WORKS OF Ralph Waldo Emerson SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE WORKS AND DAYS


"A farmer said “he should like to have all the laud that joined his own.” Bonaparte, who had the same appetite, endeavored to make the Mediterranean a French lake. Czar Alexander was more expansive, and wished to call the Pacific my ocean; and the Americans were obliged to resist his attempts to make it a close sea. But if he had the earth for his pasture and the sea for his pond he would be a pauper still. He only is rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy, or demon who possesses such power as that. The days are ever divine as to the first Aryans. They are of the least pretension and of the greatest capacity of anything that exists. They come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

How the day fits itself to the mind, winds itself round it like a fine drapery, clothing all its fancies! Any holiday communicates to us its color. We wear its cockade and favors in our humor. Remember what boys think in the morning of “Election day,” of the Fourth of July, of Thanksgiving [162] or Christmas. The very stars in their courses wink to them of nuts and cakes, bonbons, presents, and fire-works. Cannot memory still descry the old school-house and its porch, somewhat hacked by jack-knives, where you spun tops and snapped marbles; and do you not recall that life was then calendared by moments, threw itself into nervous knots of glittering hours, even as now, and not spread itself abroad an equable felicity? In college terms, and in years that followed, the young graduate, when the Commencement anniversary returned, though he were in a swamp, would see a festive light and find the air faintly echoing with plausive academic thunders. In solitude and in the country, what dignity distinguishes the holy time! The old Sabbath, or Seventh Day, white with the religions of unknown thousands of years, when this hallowed hour dawns out of the deep, — a clean page, which the wise may inscribe with truth, whilst the savage scrawls it with fetishes, — the cathedral music of history breathes through it a psalm to our solitude."

Read more here : http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/86

Ah, so very true..........we all must remember to enjoy and cherish those hours, as they just may be our last.

It appears that most of the writing which discusses this epigraph refers back to his 1851 poem "Days"



Pleaching: Trees are planted in lines, the branches are woven together to strengthen and fill any weak spots until the hedge thickens.
Fillet: a band or ribbon worn around the head, especially for binding the hair.

And when I'm older I will regret those days that I squandered - the days where I stayed hidden in my office, not shining or making a real difference. But for now .. I will eat cake, listen to the radio, drink old coffee and allow the day to go by and be ... grateful for its simplicity.
It isn't easy to be great and attempt to do great things most days.

Thank you, Mr. Emerson, for reminding me that it is my choice either way.