And so of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more of it remains.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness – an open and noble temper.
Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and, to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely pleased, you are nourished.
Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.
The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.
Do not tell me… of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. We can only see what we are, and if we misbehave we suspect others.
Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary.
The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country turns out. Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, […]
A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; – read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.
