Checking in with Emerson............

“O, see how the masses of men worry themselves into nameless graves, while here and there, some great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.”

Has a man gained any thing who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? . . . He is great who confers the most benefits.

There is no penalty for virtue; no penalty to wisdom;  they are proper additions of being.  In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world;  I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon.  There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense.  The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson.  The first quote is widely attributed to Emerson, but the Oracle Google refused to tell me the original source.  The second two quotes come from his essay, Compensation