So long as a man-of-war exists, it must ever remain a picture of much that is tyrannical and repelling in human nature.

The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.

In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!

Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.