There is nothing in the shape of kindness and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which has not found its home in that ocean-principality.
 Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). copy citation

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“There is a higher law in grammar, not to be put down by Andrews and Stoddard. Then I went on.
Such hospitality as that island has seen there has not been the like of in these our New England sovereignties. There is nothing in the shape of kindness and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which has not found its home in that ocean-principality. It has welcomed all who were worthy of welcome, from the pale clergyman who came to breathe the sea-air with its medicinal salt and iodine, to the great statesman who turned his back on the affairs of empire, and smoothed his Olympian forehead, and flashed his white teeth in merriment over the long table, where his wit was the keenest and his story the best.
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