“Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around mountains; but, like them, they break the storm and purify the air of the plain beneath them.”

“Only actions give life strength only moderation gives it charm. ”

“Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.”

“Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.”

“Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths ...”

“Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.”

“Though there had yet to be a victor in this great war that had begun almost three years ago, Maurice had written to her that they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. Freedom to thin...”

“Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.”

“I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air ...”

“There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.”

“Old age is no place for sissies.”

“Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.”

“But the dream of something unlikely has its own special name. We call it hope.”

“With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined.”

“I do not give money for just mere hopes.”