The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-travelled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.

I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.