The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

Gone before To that unknown and silent shore.

Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.

I hate a man who swallows [his food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.

The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling - a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.