The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes anothers.

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

Man has here two and a half minutes-one to smile, one to sigh, and a half to love: for in the midst of this minute he dies.

Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.

There are so many tender and holy emotions flying about in our inward world, which, like angels, can never assume the body of an outward act; so many rich and lovely flowers spring up which bear no seed, that it is a happiness poetry was invented, which receives into its limbs all these incorporeal spirits, and the perfume of all these flowers.

A woman who could always love would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife would often give or preserve many charms if it were not too often combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the face of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom.