By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry.

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls.

When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.

In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy themselves to make some right take the place of some wrong,--if it is only to make abetter paste blacking,--and they are themselves so much the better morally for it.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world, which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount.

Ninety-nine one-hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our destiny.