“Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.”

“The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future.”

“There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.”

“Thus it is our daughters leave us, Those we love, and those who love us! Just when they have learned to help us, When we are old and lean upon them, Comes a youth with flaunting feathers, With his flute of reeds, a stranger Wanders piping through the village, Beckons to the fairest maiden, And she follows where he leads her, Leaving all things for the stranger!”

“Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back on them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.”

“The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them”