C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Dueling
Since bodily strength is but a servant to the mind, it were very barbarous and preposterous that force should be made judge over reason.
If all seconds were as averse to duels as their principals, very little blood would be shed in that way.
Duelling, though barbarous in civilized, is a highly civilized institution among barbarous people; and when compared to assassination, is a prodigious victory gained over human passions.
Do not cherish that daring vice for which the whole age suffers—these private duels—which had their first original from the French and for which to this day we’re justly censured, are banished from all civil government.
With respect to duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things in this so surprising world strike me with more surprise. Two little visual spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon, make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder, whirl around, and simultaneously, by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into dissolution; and, off-hand, become air, and non-extant—the little spitfires!