Pessimism is the one ism which kills the soul.

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.

To see what is right and not to do it is cowardice. It is never a question of who is right but what is right.

History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.

The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.

The sea has formed the English character and the essential England is to be found in those who follow it. From blue waters they have learned mercifulness, and they have also learned - in the grimmest of schools - precision and resolution. The sea endures no makeshifts. If a thing is not exactly right it will be vastly wrong.