I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.

I could...see in Emerson...that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Failure is the true test of greatness

It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.

To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.

Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?