Laughter is always fatal to feeling.

All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves.

The inevitable has always found me ready and hopeful.

the breed is more than the pasture. As you know, the cuckoo lays her eggs in any bird's nest; it may be hatched among blackbirds or robins or thrushes, but it is always a cuckoo. ... a man cannot deliver himself from his ancestors.

This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.

To take offence is a great folly, and to give offence is a great folly - I know not which is the greater.

The great difference between voyages rests not with the ships, but with the people you meet on them.