“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson · Letter to his daughter, 1865
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Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.
About this quote
Meaning
Ovid is drawing on an agricultural truth to make a point about human energy and creativity. A field worked without pause eventually stops producing well; it needs time left alone to recover its fertility. The same principle, he suggests, applies to people. Rest is not idleness or lost time. It is a necessary condition for future abundance, and skipping it comes at a real cost to what comes next.
Context
This line appears in the Ars Amatoria, a long Latin poem in which Ovid offers witty and sometimes irreverent guidance on romantic pursuit. The work is playful and urbane in tone, and Ovid uses the agricultural image here to counsel patience and strategic withdrawal rather than constant effort. It is a small moment of practical wisdom tucked into a poem primarily concerned with the art of love, which is part of what makes it so quotable outside its original context.
About the author
Ovid was a Roman poet who lived from 43 BC to around 17 or 18 AD. He was one of the most celebrated and prolific writers of his era, producing works that ranged from love poetry to the grand mythological collection known as the Metamorphoses. His career was eventually cut short when he was exiled from Rome by the emperor Augustus, a fate whose exact reasons remain a matter of scholarly discussion. His influence on later European literature, art, and poetry has been enormous and lasting.
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