Joys are our wings, sorrows our spurs.

It is easier and handier for men to flatter than to praise.

He thought of the mouldering child, which laid its withered thin arms around his soul, as if it were his own, and to whom Death had given as much as a god gave to Endymion, — sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.

Like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, the fiercest hatred is silent.

It has been jestingly said that the works of John Paul Richter are almost unintelligible to any but the Germans, and even to some of them. A worthy German, just before Richter's death, edited a complete edition of his works, in which one particular passage fairly puzzled him. Determined to have it explained at the source, he went to John Paul himself. The author's reply was very characteristic: "My good friend, when I wrote that passage, God and I knew what it meant; it is possible that God knows it still; but as for me, I have totally forgotten."

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

Repetition is the mother of education.