No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one- I mean a downright bumpkin dandy- a fellow that, in the dog-days of summer, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.
A man can be honest in any sort of skin.
Think of it. To go down to posterity as a ‘man who lived among the cannibals.’
Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols.
It is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realise the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.
And the visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.
For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who “believe and tremble” has one.
Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.
I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before; the world is not yet middle-aged.
In some things, we Americans leave to other countries the carrying out of the principle that stands at the head of our Declaration of Independence.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.
Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber; a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.
God is liberal of color; so should man be.
Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.
If you begin the day with a laugh, you may, nevertheless, end it with a sob and a sigh.
Great towers take time to construct.
A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.
Niggards are oftentimes neat.