Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman - repose in energy. The Greek battle pieces are calm; the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect. [ Emerson ]

A friend is he who sets his heart upon us, is happy with us and delights in us; does for us what we want, is willing and fully engaged to do all he can for us, on whom we can rely in all cases. [ William Ellery Channing ]

There are three classes of readers; some enjoy without judgment; others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge. The latter class reproduces the work of art on which it is engaged. Its numbers are very small. [ Goethe ]

Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative In your reading; to read faithfully and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in, - a real, not an imaginary - and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. [ Carlyle ]

Calumny is a monstrous vice: for, where parties indulge in it, there are always two that are actively engaged in doing wrong, and one who is subject to injury. The calumniator inflicts wrong by slandering the absent; he who gives credit to the calumny before he has investigated the truth is equally implicated. The person traduced is doubly injured - first by him who propagates, and secondly by him who credits the calumny. [ Heroidotus ]

All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow or along the ground, but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent. [ Emerson ]