To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.

He who is ready to despair in solitary peril, plucks up a heart in the presence of another. In a plurality of comrades is much countenance and consolation.

The man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

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?