It gave me a moment of exquisite satisfaction to find myself moving away from civilisation in this rude canvas canoe of a model that has served primitive races since men first went to sea.

A translation is no translation unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

Words, particularly in a play, should have the texture of a crisp, autumn apple.

It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

A week of sweeping fogs has passed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere but a mass of wet rock, a strip of surf, and then a tumult of waves.

A low line of shore was visible at first on the right between the movement of the waves and fog, but when we came further it was lost sight of, and nothing could be seen but the mist curling in the rigging, and a small circle of foam.