We are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom.

For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.

If a man goes a little too far along a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else.

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in.

Fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral.

We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.