To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.
I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
Art is the objectification of feeling.
To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.