I suppose you could never explain to the most ingenous molusk that such a creature as a whale existed.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

The dead sleep in their moonless night; my business is with the living.

I have only one doctrine, the infinitude of the private man.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.