What Cicero said of men-that they are like wines, age souring the bad, and bettering the good-we can say of misfortune, that it has the same effect upon them.

Nations and men are only the best when they are the gladdest, and deserve heaven when they enjoy it.

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.

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

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.

Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

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.