The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run

If you begin the day with a laugh, you may, nevertheless, end it with a sob and a sigh.

Let us only hate hatred; and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.

Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.

Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?

And the visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.

Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

The western spirit is, or will yet be (for no other is, or can be) the true American one.

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas.

At banquets surfeit not, but fill; partake, and retire; and eat not again till you crave.

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.

It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.

...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.

A thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true.

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?

Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.

The world's a ship on its voyage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

Everyone knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything cooly is to do it genteelly.

I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.

The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.

Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.

War being the greatest of evils, all its accessories necessarily partake of the same character.

I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, no matter how comical.

The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.

Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.

Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.

And what is it, thought I, after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.

There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.

Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?

for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.

Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.

In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.

I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.

There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.

A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.

A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us?

Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.

Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

A ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.

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