April 10
*Thou art careful and troubled about many things.*
Companions of the Way (Morning)THE inner life sits at home, and does not learn to do things, nor value these feats at all. "Tis a quiet, wise perception. It loves truth because it is itself real; it loves right, it knows nothing else; but it makes no progress; was as wise in our first memory of it as now; is just the same now in maturity, and hereafter in age, it was in youth. We have grown to manhood and womanhood; we have powers, connection, children, reputations, professions; this makes no account of them all. It lives in the great present, it makes the present great. This tranquil, well-founded, wide-seeing soul is no express-rider, no attorney, no magistrate: it lies in the sun, and broods on the world. A person of this temper once said to a man of much activity: "I will pardon you that you do so much, and you me that I do nothing." And Euripides says that "Zeus hates busybodies, and those who do too much."
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
THE SPIRIT OF REST