They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.

Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn't do anything about it.

Doc still loved true things but he knew that it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.

Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.

Some men ease themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.

We, or at least I, can have no conception of human life and human thought in a hundred years or fifty years. Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know. The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for thy can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain.