In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.

A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.

We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us?

See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.

Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone; and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.

How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!