In retirement, the passage of time seems accelerated. Nothing warns us of its flight. It is a wave which never murmurs, because there is no obstacle to its flow.

By becoming unhappy, we sometimes learn how to be less so.

Pride dries the tears of anger and vexation; humility, those of grief. The one is indignant that we should suffer; the other calms us by the reminder that we deserve nothing else.

There is nothing at all in life, except what we put there.

Old age is the night of life, as night is the old age of the day. Still, night is full of magnificence; and, for many, it is more brilliant than the day.

We are all of us, in this world, more or less like St. January, whom the inhabitants of Naples worship one day, and pelt with baked apples the next.

Might we not say to the confused voices which sometimes arise from the depths of our being: "Ladies, be so kind as to speak only four at a time?"