People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.

The theater, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history.

To condemn spontaneous and delightful occupations because they are useless for self-preservation shows an uncritical prizing of life irrespective of its content.

It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.

I love moving water, I love ships, I love the sharp definition, the concentrated humanity, the sublime solitude of life at sea. The dangers of it only make present to us the peril inherent in all existence, which the stupid, ignorant, un-travelled land-worm never discovers; and the art of it, so mathematical, so exact, so rewarding to intelligence, appeals to courage and clears the mind of superstition, while filling it with humility and true religion.

To be bewitched is not to be saved, though all the magicians and aesthetes in the world should pronounce it to be so.

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.