Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time. - Alphonse de Lamartine

The very eagle, destined to soar so high and to see so far, begins his life in the fissures of the rocks, and in his early days only sees the arid and sometimes fetid borders of his eyry.

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

Silence is the winding-sheet of the past: it is sometimes impious, often dangerous to raise it. But even when it is raised piously and lovingly, the first moment is a cruel one.