To pay compliments to the one we love is the first method of caressing, a demi-audacity venturing. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.

When people look back at their childhood or youth, their wistfulness comes from the memory, not of what their lives had been in those years, but of what life had then promised to be. The expectation of some indefinable splendor, of the unusual, the exciting, the great is an attribute of youth and the process of aging is the process of that expectations' gradual extinction. One does not have to let it happen. But that fire dies for lack of fuel, under the gray weight of disappointments.

Night and the day, when united, Bring forth the beautiful light.

Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.

Wisdom and eloquence are not always united.

And, moreover, when it happens that both are sincere and good, nothing will mix and amalgamate more easily than an old priest and an old soldier. In reality, they are the same kind of man. One has devoted himself to country upon earth, the other to his country in heaven; there is no other difference.

As for methods of prayer, all of them are good as long as they are sincere.