Ever try to hold a butterfly? It can't be done. You damage them," he said. 'As gentle as you try to be, you take the powder from their wings and they won't ever fly the same. It's kinder to let them go.

If it is true that men have souls that do survive them, he went on, ignoring me, and if those souls are born again to life, you need not worry that my ghost will haunt you. I'll haunt you in the flesh, instead.

Hope rarely enters into it. 'Tis action moves the world.

..the fields might fall to fallow and the birds might stop their song awhile; the growing things might die and lie in silence under snow, while through it all the cold sea wore its face of storms and death and sunken hopes...and yet unseen beneath the waves a warmer current ran that, in its time, would bring the spring.

But life, if nothing else, had taught her promises weren't always to be counted on, and what appeared at first a shining chance might end in bitter disappointment.

Life is always uncertain,'he said with a shrug. 'We cannot let the fear of what might happen stop us living as we choose.

Ye'll never best your fears until ye face them