how to manage your day
good advice from Emerson, though slightly misquoted most of the time.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It's a good quote. As it turns out, though, it's not a full quote. I dug up the source and the full quote.
...You must finish a term & finish every day, & be done with it. For manners, & for wise living, it is a vice to remember. You have done what you could – some blunders and absurdities have no doubt crept in forget them as fast as you can tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it well & serenely, & with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day for all that is good and fair. It is too dear with its hopes & invitations to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Rusk, Ralph Leslie (ed). The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1848-1855. United States: Columbia University Press, 1941. [Find in Google Books]
Specifically, it appears in volume 4 of his Letters, p 438-9, in a letter to his daughter Ellen, sent on April 8, 1854. They appear to be discussing when she will return from school as the end of the term approaches.
I have to say, I appreciate his spirited and consistent use of the ampersand, that grand bit of punctuation. But I can see how makers of inspirational quote merchandise everywhere would go with the shorter version.
I'm reminded of Jesus's remarks in a similar vein, in Matthew 6:34 (I like the King James translation of this, "evil thereof" has a nice ring to it):
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Speaking of little inspirational signs, let's end on a happier note with a photo of the one I keep on my desk just below my monitor, related to the scripture above.
