I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.

A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground.

One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible.

Optimism is the true moral courage

I do not know what 'moss' stands for in the proverb , but if it stood for useful knowledge... I gathered more moss by rolling than I ever did at school.

I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.

Life to me is the greatest of all games. The danger lies in treating it as a trivial game, a game to be taken lightly, and a game in which the rules don't matter much. The rules matter a great deal. The game has to be played fairly or it is no game at all. And even to win the game is not the chief end. The chief end is to win it honorably and splendidly.