“ Ay, why canst thou not, good soul? for the cold earth would have sucked out of all thy wounds the last venom with which the human heart is laid beneath its surface, just as the hand when buried in earth recovers from the sting of a bee. But I turn mine eye away from thy pain, and look up at the glimmering moon, where Eugenius opens his eyes among smiling children, and his own child, now with wings, falls upon his heart. ”

“ The earth crept back into the valleys, the sky rested itself on the mountains. The waving, glimmering sun seemed to our Eugenius a mirror of the moon, and he said to his beloved, when the icy summits had already cast their flames upon the earth: "I feel so weary, and yet so well. Will it not be as if we left two dreams—the dream of life and the dream of death—if we enter the cloudless moon as the first shore beyond the hurricanes of life?" ”

“ How quiet is every thing in the dimly lit portico of the second world, a misty rain of light silvers o'er the bright fields of the first heaven, and beads of light instead of sparkling dew hang upon flowers and summits, the blue of heaven is darker over the lily plains, all the melodies in the thinner air are but a dispersed echo,—only night-flowers exhale their scents, and dazzle waving around calmer glances—here the waving plains rock as in a cradle the crushed souls, and the lofty billows of life fall gliding apart—then the heart sleeps, the eye becomes dry, the wish becomes silent. ”

“ On the first fine spring morning they went the long road to the high mountain. There is a holiness which sorrow alone can give in its purity; the stream of life becomes white as snow when it is dashed against rocks. There is an elevation where little thoughts no more intrude between sublime ones, as when upon a mountain one sees the summits close to each other without their connection in the depth below. Thou hadst that holiness, Rosamond, and thou that elevation, Eugenius. ”

“ The point of the obelisk was glittering in the full moon, and here I told my simple story. But do thou, gentle reader, draw—which is as much as coffin and obelisk—draw, I say, the inscription on the coffin into the ashes of oblivion, and write the letters of the obelisk with pure human heart's blood in thy inmost self.
Many souls drop from heaven like flowers; but, with their white buds, they are trodden down into the mud, and lie soiled and crushed in the print of a hoof. You also were crushed, Eugenius and Rosamond. ”

“ Oh, Eugenius, how great then did thy soul become! The life of earth lay at a distance and far below thee, free from all the distortions which we see in it, because we stand too near it, as the decorations of shorter scenes change from landscapes to mis-shapen strokes when we look at them closely. ”

“ Tender souls like yours are attacked by three robbers of their joys—the mob, whose rough gripe gives to such soft hearts nothing but scars; destiny, which does not wipe away the tear from a fair soul full of brilliancy, but the lustre should perish also, as we do not wipe a wet diamond, lest it should grow dim; your own hearts which rejoice too much, and enjoy too little, have too much hope, and too little power of endurance. ”

“ A man bears the pain of the wound, but sinks under the scar: a woman seldom combats her grief, but yet she survives it. "Remain here," he said, with a suppressed voice, "I will lay it to rest before the moon rises." ”

“ He looks up and spreads the wings of his soul, and when the sixty minutes, which we call sixty years, have finished striking, he then, lifts himself up, and kindles himself as he rises, and the ashes of his plumage fall back, and the unveiled soul rises alone, free from earth, and pure as a musical tone. ”

“ Thus, the inhabitant of the North Pole in the long night, when the sun has ceased to rise, discerns at twelve o'clock, a dawn gilding the highest mountains, and he thinks of his long summer, when it will set no more. ”

“ These persons wished, in the spring-time, to quit the whirlpool of mankind, which beat so hardly and so coldly against their hearts. They had a quiet cottage prepared for them on one of the high Alps opposite to the silver chain of the Staubbach. ”