Happiness is rarely absent; it is we that know not of its presence.

Every year, in November, at the season that follows the hour of the dead, the crowning and majestic hours of autumn, I go to visit the chrysanthemums ... They are indeed, the most universal, the most diverse of flowers.

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

To be good we must needs have suffered; but perhaps it is necessary to have caused suffering before we can become better.

To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.

Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest heights of our soul.

The souls of all our brethren are ever hovering about us, craving for a caress, and only waiting for the signal.