They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.

I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.

This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders.

There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.

There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.

I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.

A ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.