Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.

But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.

There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.

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.

Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.

I am past scorching; not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.

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