How many other friends I will never meet again! Every night as he goes to bed, a man can count his losses; it’s only his years that do not leave him,… - François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand

My mother, Apolline de Bedée, endowed with great wit and a prodigious imagination, was formed by reading Fénelon, Racine, and Madame de Sévigné. She was nourished on anecdotes of the Court of Louis XIV and knew all of Cyrus by heart. A small woman of large features, dark-haired and ugly, her elegant manners and lively disposition were at odds with my father’s rigidity and calm. Loving society as much as he loved solitude, as exuberant and animated as he was expressionless and cold, she possessed no taste not antagonistic to the tastes of her husband.

Quanto durerebbe se fosse vero? il tempo di stringerti tra le braccia. La gioventù rende bello tutto, persino l'infelicità. Incanta quando con i riccioli di una chioma bruna può asciugare le lacrime man mano che scorrono sulle guance. Ma la vecchiaia rende brutta persino la felicità; nell'infelicità è ancora peggio: i radi capelli bianchi che restano sulla testa calva di un uomo non saranno mai abbastanza lunghi da asciugare le lacrime che cadono dai suoi occhi.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.