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Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Warren Buffett

Billionaire investor and business magnate Warren Buffett’s description of shade on a warm, sunny day is a perfect metaphor for the importance of long-term thinking and investing in the future. When we realize our actions can either help or harm our future selves — or later generations — the choices we make become immensely impactful. It may require sacrifice and hard work today, but we will surely be thankful for our efforts in the long run.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

Anne Frank

Anne Frank’s legacy of unshakeable hope gives great weight to this quote, which she wrote in her diary while enduring the horrors faced by Jewish families during the Holocaust. Entries Frank wrote while in hiding prove the young girl understood the infectious quality of happiness, and the importance of spreading joy during times of suffering.

In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

Montesquieu

A French political theorist of the Enlightenment era, the Baron de Montesquieu was familiar with the slow-moving nature of success. Though active in his local parliament and scientific academy, Montesquieu did not attain literary fame until nearly a decade into his career, with his epistolary novel, “Persian Letters.” He traveled abroad extensively to study governments across Europe, leading to some of his best-known writing. Montesquieu even considered a diplomatic career, but realized establishing it would take too long, choosing instead to devote himself further to his writing. His words and commitment to his work encourage us to be patient with our ambitions, giving each step the attention it needs so that we can continue to grow.

Dare to be naïve.

Buckminster Fuller

Inventor Buckminster Fuller was not a fan of know-it-alls. As you might expect, the visionary who engineered the Montreal Biosphere in 1967 was insatiably curious, a quality that fueled his passions for architecture, futurism, philosophy, and poetry. This sentiment permeated Fuller’s bibliography of more than 30 books. “It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries,” he wrote in 1975’s “Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, Volume One.” In his opinion, it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new.

We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali writer gifted in many mediums, from short stories and essays to songs and plays. In 1913, he became the first non-European writer in history to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature. Three years later, Tagore published “Stray Birds,” a collection of 326 philosophical verses and brief poems that includes this line. Despite his talents, Tagore understood that the best human trait is a modest and unassuming nature, which enables us to listen well, form unexpected bonds, and learn from others.

Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Mahatma Gandhi

Each Wednesday for the majority of 12 years (from 1919 to 1931), future five-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Mahatma Gandhi published “Young India,” an English-language journal that encouraged his followers to utilize nonviolent tactics for bettering their political and social status. His streak was interrupted when a pair of articles procured him a six-year prison sentence in Bombay (now Mumbai) for sedition. After two years, appendicitis led to Gandhi’s release, and neither the ailment nor his recent imprisonment kept him from resuming his entries. In an April 1931 issue, the lawyer, politician, and activist introduced the above wisdom. By refusing to hold grudges against even the most hostile forces, Gandhi cultivated his characteristic resilience.

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.

Benjamin Franklin

Under the pseudonym “Poor Richard,” Benjamin Franklin wrote this aphorism in an edition of his yearly almanac, a collection of information, advice, and sayings published from 1733 to 1760. With these words, the founding father, inventor, and political philosopher draws a distinct line between the virtues of faith and reason. He asserts that logic can often get in the way of the cultivation of faith, whether in a deity or the belief in an idea or person. Clinging too closely to what we know, Franklin warns, can obscure the vastness of what we still have yet to learn.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We were visiting family and friends in Pennsylvania.

Great necessities call out great virtues.

Abigail Adams

It is in times of need, distress, and reckoning that great women and men rise to the occasion and act. First Lady Abigail Adams, along with her colonial American compatriots, witnessed countless examples of courage, sacrifice, humility, and honor during the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. In 1780, amid the trials of the Revolutionary War, Adams wrote these words in a letter to her young son, John Quincy Adams, to remind him that hard times require us to act on our best qualities.

Love is free; it is not practiced as a way of achieving other ends.

Pope Benedict XVI

Perhaps the most universally sacred virtue, love is most valuable when it is practiced purely and with no expectation of reward. Pope Benedict XVI summarized this concept in "Deus Caritas Est” (“God Is Love”), his first encyclical letter (a papal letter written to the Roman Catholic bishops) after his appointment as pope in 2005. This rumination on love — in both its earthly and divine forms — emphasizes its unconditional and generous nature, which seeks nothing in return.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven

In a letter to German poet and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer Bettina von Arnim quoted this line first spoken by her friend Ludwig von Beethoven, whose musical ability had by that point (the early 1800s) taken Europe by storm. In the view of the virtuoso, the unspeakable quality of music to uncover deep emotion and understanding surpasses that of any works by sages and philosophers. For Beethoven, to hear and be moved by a musical composition is to experience the highest intellectual state.