It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.

If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.

Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?

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

For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!

It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there.

Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.