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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.

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.

Approximate author period: c. 1842 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
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
Thoughts: Selected from the writings of favorite authors (1901) (1901 AD)

Complete signed selection 142; printed byline: Emerson; New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1901

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.

The voice behind the words.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Photographic portrait, 1857

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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