We die of too much life.
It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.
All truth is profound.
A thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
All the world over, the picturesque yields to the pocketesque.
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.
How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.
Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure.
Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes after.
If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.
Let us only hate hatred; and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Me thinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.
Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras.
I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also. But when a man’s religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.