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.

Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them.

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

A man can be honest in any sort of skin.

Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.

No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.