When the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?
There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.
Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor.
Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head.
An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
Genius is full of trash.
Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.
I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, – for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it – not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.