When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.

That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man.

A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.

Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone; and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.

At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so sound before