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.

The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape.

The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.

Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive luminous character.

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.