I like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.

The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports with time.

The world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists.

The world is full of judgment-days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped.