Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Progress of Culture”

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devils alphabet – the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies. – Michel de Montaigne