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!

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.

An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.