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.

Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.

There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.

When we affect to condemn savages, we should remember that by doing so we asperse our own progenitors; for they were savages also.Who can swear that among the naked British barbarians sent to Rome to be stared at more than 1500 years ago, the ancestor of Bacon might not have been found?--Why, among the very Thugs of India, or the bloody Dyaks of Borneo, exists the germ of all that is intellectually elevated and grand. We are all of us--Anglo-Saxons, Dyaks and Indians--sprung from one head and made in one image.

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

truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.