Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Distance... is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.

There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.

You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.

These auspicious aspects, which the astrologers subsequently interpreted for me, may have been the causes of my preservation.