I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.

Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

Failure is the test of greatness.

Bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the fire-side.

However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal.

The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.