For there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence.

I like what is in the work -- the chance to find yourself.

The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don't fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it.

I let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.

Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.

It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of pain; and some of our griefs (some only, not all, for it is the capacity for suffering which makes man August in the eyes of men) have their source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling com passion as the common inheritance of us all.

I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.