It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.

Failure is the true test of greatness

Implacable I, the implacable Sea; Implacable most when most I smile serene- Pleased, not appeased, by myriad wrecks in me.

Of the quaking recruit, three pitched battles make a grim grenadier; and he who shrank from the muzzle of a cannon, is now ready to yield his mustache for a sponge.

Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.

Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.