Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.

Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.

Sorrows are like thunderclouds, in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.

What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease.

God is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul.

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.

Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around mountains; but, like them, they break the storm and purify the air of the plain beneath them.

Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it.

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.

There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know.

Every man regards his own life as the New Year's Eve of time.

Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end.