All work of man is as the swimmer's: a vast ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not bravely, it will keep its word.

If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Time has only a relative existence.

When I gaze into the stars, they look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent spaces, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man. Thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up by time, and there remains no record of them any more. Yet Arcturus and Orion, Sirius and Pleiades, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar!

Fancy that thou deservest to be hangedthou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged ina hair halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.

The end of man is action.

Does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him?