Chiefly the sea-shore has been the point of departure to knowledge, as to commerce. The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

The best nations are those most widely related; and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is the most potent advancer ofnations.

It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern.

We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent wasa youthful effervescence which we have now lost.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science, and such is the mechanical determination of our age, and so recent are our best contrivances, that use has not dulled our joy and pride in them. These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a godlike ease and power.