To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk exposing our true self. To place our ideals—our dreams—before the crowd is to risk loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk despair. To try is to...

Seeds, scattered on fertile ground, are warmed by the sun and fed by the soil. They sprout and grow, producing great fields of grain. The grain is harvested and ground into flour and shipped across the nation....

It’s really complicated honey. I’m only now understanding it myself. We weren’t really thinking about it like you and your friends do. It’s not that we didn’t care about how it would impact you; we weren’t really thinking about you at all. Oh that’s sounds terrible, I’ll say. I...

Wealth, bounty, scarcity, money, are complex—layered with meaning. We use money all the time, frequently worry over it, try to manage it—but to really think about it is pretty daunting. Money is a tool in a world based upon exchange; it can’t be avoided. At one time people exchanged goods,...

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;...

"Humans are part of the web of life. What we do to the planet, what we do to other species, and what we do to other people, we end up doing to ourselves."...

A person is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred, that of plants and animals as that of other men and women, and when one devotes oneself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

NARRATOR: We know Ralph Waldo Emerson. We know the sage of Concord who gave us the doctrine of “self‐reliance” and the belief in the “Oversoul.” He was the leader of the Transcendentalist movement, and is remembered as one of the most important cultural figures of the nineteenth century.

"She wore this circle of friends, when I first knew her, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck. They were so much to each other that Margaret seemed to represent them all, and to know her was to acquire a place with them. The confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them....

"She possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time."...

"I accept the universe."...

"Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow."...

"The ship struck at ten minutes after four A.M., and all hands, being mostly in their nightclothes, made haste to the forecastle, the water coming in at once. There they remained; the passengers in the forecastle, the crew above it, doing what they could. Every wave lifted the forecastle roof and...

"The position I early was enabled to take was one of self‐reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts and guardians who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or...

"What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded."...

"Let it not be said, wherever there is energy or creative genius, ʹShe has a masculine mind.ʹ This by no means argues a willing want of generosity toward Woman. Man is as generous towards her as he knows how to be. Wherever she has herself arisen in national or private history, and nobly shone...

"We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty....

"I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers. It needs not that I should ask the clairvoyant whether a spirit‐world projects...

"All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural....

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it. Variants: If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it. If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it."...