So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts.

I lived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me.

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.

The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

By the time a man gets well into his seventies his continued existence is a mere miracle.

It was Silver's voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world. I lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiostiy, for, in those dozen words, I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended on me alone.