It is absurd to require of youth thoughts before they have any. There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery. The compensation for injustice is that in that dark ordeal we gather the worthiest around us. Convents seem calculated to make numbers really miserable, and only to hide from the World that they are so.

Be cautious, young people; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still) feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and confidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable and withdraw.

I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in midwinter just landed from a four year’s dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Ah, God! What trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.

Such as can retain their sense after the first prostrating effect of the supernatural are apt to experience terror in one of its strangest forms—a wild desire to fling themselves upon the terrible object. I am tormented with an everlasting desire for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. He could not understand why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given.

I will never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them. Ill-temper lies buried under a studied accumulation of smiles. Envy, hatred, and malice, retreat from the countenance, to entrench themselves more deeply in the heart. Treachery lurks under the flowers of courtesy. Ignorance and folly take refuge in that unmeaning gabble, small talk. Small indeed!—the absolute minimum of the infinitely little.

Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit. I say what other people only think; and when all the rest of the World is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard and shows the bare bones beneath.

Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in one basket”—which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention”; but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET.” Individual concessions is made without pain, it is also made without meaning, for it is not in human nature to project any amendment without a secret repugnance.

No experiment can be more precarious than that of a half-confidence. The secret of success is concentration; wherever there has been a great life, or a great work, that has gone before. Taste everything a little, look at everything a little; but live for one thing. Anything is possible to a man who knows his end and moves straight for it, and for it alone.

People who think they have been wronged are apt to be unreasonable, and people who have never tried to put themselves in the place of those who suffer are apt to think them extravagant in their views. There is often a strange inconsistency in the mind of man; he shall have sufficient virtue to condemn what he shall not have fortitude to resist. Fast and loose in one thing, fat and loose in everything.

The minds of these simple savages, unoccupied by matters of graver moment, were capable of deriving the utmost delight from circumstances which would have passed unnoticed in more intelligent communities. My comfort is, I am sure Randolph will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done. As Ryan could not receive comfort from any such expectation, he made no answer.