It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.

A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway.

Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.

Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

The good author is he who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul amongst criticisms.