Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

The man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.

flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

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