Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.

When the bird of the heart begins to sing, too often will reason stop up her ears.

She laughed and danced with the thought of death in her heart.

Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. “Someone is dying,” thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now dead, had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.

It was clear to me, as I glanced back over my earlier life, that a loving Providence watched over me, that all was directed for me by a higher power.

In the days of Moses and the prophets such a man would have been counted among the wise men of the land; in the Middle Ages he would have been burned at the stake.

Brave soldier, never fear. Even though your death is near.