Ah! These commercial interests -- spoiling the finest life under the sun. Why must the sea be used for trade -- and for war as well?...It would have been so much nicer just to sail about, with here and there a port and a bit of land to stretch one's legs on, buy a few books and get a change of cooking for a while.

Never test another man by your own weakness.

I have been called romantic. Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I have been called a realist also. And as that charge too can be made out, let us try to live up to it, at whatever cost, for a change.

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmostphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.

But it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!

A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas.