“Deceive not thyself by overexpecting happiness in the married estate. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.”

“Sing, sweet nightingale,
Sing me a song of a night never-ending,
Sing, sweet nightingale,
And I'll try to pretend
That tomorrow's nowhere near
And there's nothing to fear.”

“My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. It's like I was raising chickens inside of me. The chickens lay their eggs and the eggs hatch into other chickens, which then lay eggs.”

“The human heart is an egg; and out of it are hatched this world and heaven and hell.”

“There are also in some places springs which have the peculiarity of giving fine singing voices to the natives, as at Tarsus in Magnesia and in other countries of that kind.”

“Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.”

“A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.”

“The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.”

“It doesn't matter if you're born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan's egg!”

“If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.”