The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and farehard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.

It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.

The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.

For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.

Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,--that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,--who is invariably the devil,--and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,--who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.

The inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their "soil," but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on.