“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.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson ~ (1803 –1882) American poet, philosopher, essayist and abolitionist.  His first two collections of "Essays" First Series (1841) and  Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include  "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet",  "Experience" and "Nature". His work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him. , He wrote: "In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man" More