The ocean asks for nothing but those who stand by her shores gradually attune themselves to her rhythm.

The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire.

We need never be ashamed of our tears.

A man in public life expects to be sneered at -- it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.

I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuadinig arguments of my best friends.

For though we are perpetually bragging of it as our safety, it is nothing but a poor fringe on the mantle of the upper.

Nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.