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

He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.

And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.

A historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience.

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