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I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best; and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.... In the morning I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes and mother, Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far off. If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway.
I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best; and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.... In the morning I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes and mother, Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far off. If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway.
Approximate author period: c. 1842 AD · industrial
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- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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- Approximate author period: c. 1842 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1803–1882)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- My Commonplace Book (third English edition,1921) (1921 AD)
Page 221 · printed citation: R. W. Emerson (Essay on Experience). · compiler notes excluded
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Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.
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