“Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.”

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.

Failure is the test of greatness.

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

We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.

Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.

Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.

All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do–remember that–and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.

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

My body is but the lees of my better being.

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.

Meditation and water are wedded for ever.

The eyes are the gateway to the soul.

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame.

Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.

If he does it outwardly (among others) then he has dishonored and shamed him.