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About this quote

What does it mean?
While physical poisons are dangerous, the slow erosion of time is the most certain and inevitable force of destruction.
In plain terms
Poisons kill, but time destroys everything eventually.
What can you take from it?
Recognize time as the most powerful force of change and decay.

Where it applies

  • philosophical debate
  • aging
  • legacy planning

Putting it to work

  • value time
  • plan for the future
  • accept change

Questions to consider

  • What will time take from you?
  • How do you face the passage of time?

Another view

Time can also build and heal, not just destroy.

More from Ralph Waldo Emerson

  1. Science does not know its debt to imagination.

    Permalink to quote #258
  2. The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.

    Permalink to quote #260
  3. A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

    Permalink to quote #257

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