If you begin the day with a laugh, you may, nevertheless, end it with a sob and a sigh.

Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass.

The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!

I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.

In the operative opinion of the world, he who is already fully provided with what is necessary for him, that man shall have more;while he who is deplorably destitute of the same, he shall have taken away from him even that which he hath. Yet the world vows it is a very plain, downright matter-of-fact, plodding, humane sort of world.

The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head--no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.

There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.