Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.

Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure.

The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run

In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.

The dinner-hour is the summer of the day: full of sunshine, I grant; but not like the mellow autumn of supper.