Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality, and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was.

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.

I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.

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.

No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect that we hear too much of it in literature.