The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise. [ Willmott ]

A marriageable girl is a kind of merchandise that can be negotiated at wholesale, only on condition that no one takes a part at retail. [ A. Karr ]

In the youth of a State, arms do flourish; in the middle age of a State, learning; and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a State, mechanical arts and merchandise. [ Bacon ]

Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise - the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods. There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

The gloomy recess of an ecclesiastical library is like a harbor, into which a far-travelling curiosity has sailed with its freight, and cast anchor; the ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise; odors of distant countries and times steal from the red leaves the swelling ridges of vellum, and the titles in tarnished gold. [ R. A. Willmott ]

What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. [ Whipple ]