If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury; if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.

The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.

Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.

Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.

A ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.