absurdity

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from

He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor.

I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.

In a word, Frederick Cuvier’s Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash.