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# A sentence I keep returning to
- URL: https://proza.site/a-sentence-i-keep-returning-to/
- Published: 2026-05-13T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-14T10:49:33.000Z
- Description: Eight words from Emerson, and why they stuck.
- Author: Daniël van der Winden
- Tags: Notes, Reading

Some sentences you read once and carry for years. This one has been in my commonplace book since the first page:

> The years teach much which the days never know.

It comes from Emerson’s essay *Experience*, which he wrote after the death of his young son, and it is easy to read as a consolation. Things will make sense in time. But I have come to read it as a description of how anything worthwhile gets made.

No single day of writing feels like progress. Most days you move a paragraph around and go to bed unsure whether it is better. It is only from the distance of a year that you can see the shape of what the days were building, and by then you have usually forgotten the days themselves.