My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.

I will frankly confess that after passing a few weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of- war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing

That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped.

Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.

War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.

To be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.