We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.

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

Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe.

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

Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.

A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wits' end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree around them.

Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.