Ralph Waldo Emerson — "I am a walking encyclopedia of useless knowledge."

"I have a passion for the truth, and a hatred of all falsehood."

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."

"Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool."

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

"We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing."