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

Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!

Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.

Time is made up of various ages; and each thinks its own a novelty.

Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.

There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan.

For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.