It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.

Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.

And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of ; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone ; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Me thinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.