“Perhaps you'd like, you gentle fellow, To hear what I'm prepared to sayOn "kinfolk" and their implications?Well, here's my view of close relations:They're people whom we're bound to prize, To honor, love, and idolize,And following the old tradition,To visit come the Christmas feast, Or send a wish by mail at least;All other days they've our permission,To quite forget us if they please-So grant them, God, long life and ease!”

“Please never despise the translator. He's the mailman of human civilization.”

“I gaze forward without fear.”

“Tell him that riches will not procure for you a single moment of happiness. Luxury consoles poverty alone, and at that only for a short time, until one becomes accustomed to it.”

“But flaming youth in all it's madnessKeeps nothing of its heart concealed:It's loves and hates, its joys and sadness,Are babbled out and soon revealed.”

“How sad, however, if we're givenOur youth as something to betray,And what if youth in turn is drivenTo cheat on us, each hour, each day,If our most precious aspirations,Our freshest dreams, imaginationsIn fast succession have decayed,As leaves, in putrid autumn, fade.It is too much to see before oneNothing but dinners in a row,Behind the seemly crowd to go,Regarding life as mere decorum,Having no common views to share,Nor passions that one might declare.”

“Love is for every age auspicious,But for the virginal and youngIts impulses are more propitiousLike vernal storms on meadows sprung:They freshen in the rain of passion,Ripening in their renovation –And life, empowered, sends up shootsOf richest blooms and sweetest fruits.But at a late age, dry and fruitless,The final stage to which we’re led,Sad is the trace of passions dead:Thus storms in autumn, cold and ruthless,Transform the field into a slough,And strip the trees from root to bough.”

“Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.”

“He who has lived and thought can neverHelp in his soul despising men,He who has felt will be foreverHaunted by days he can’t regain.For him there are no more enchantments,Him does the serpent of remembrance,Him does repentance always gnaw.All this will frequently affordA great delight to conversations.”

“Recalling former years’ romances,Recalling love that time enhances,With tenderness, with not a care,Alive, at liberty once more,We drank, in mute intoxication,The breath of the indulgent night!Just as a sleepy convict mightBe carried from incarcerationInto a greenwood, so were weBorne to our youth by reverie.”

“Thus heaven's gift to us is this: That habit takes the place of bliss.”