I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.

A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?

There's magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.