Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.

We manage to swallow flesh, only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do.

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

Say of him what you please, but I know my child's failings. I do not love him because he is good, but because he is my little child. How should you know how dear he can be when you try to weigh his merits against his faults? When I must punish him he becomes all the more a part of my being. When I cause his tears to come my heart weeps with him. I alone have a right to blame and punish, for he only may chastise who loves.

The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth's dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart.

If someone smells a flower and says he does not understand, the reply to him is: there is nothing to understand, it is only a scent. If he persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all mean? Then one has either to change the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower.

The flower fades and dies; but he who wears the flower has not to mourn for it for ever.