For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave.

Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.

Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.

In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach.

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.