“When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.
“A man thirty years old, I said to myself, should have his field of life all ploughed, and his planting well done; for after that it is summer time
“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions
“But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine
“All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind