A tender sadness drops upon my soul, like the soft twilight dropping on the world.

To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.

The truly great rest in the knowledge of their own deserts, nor seek the conformation of the world.

My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame.

Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life.

And in any case, to the old man, when the world becomes trite, the triteness arises not so much from a cessation as from a transference of interest. What is taken from this world is given to the next. The glory is in the east in the morning, it is in the west in the afternoon, and when it is dark the splendour is irradiating the realm of the under-world. He would only follow.