It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on - which was just what you wanted it to do.

If you don't make mistakes, you don't make anything .

His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain -- why he did not instantly disappear.

The humblest craft that floats makes its appeal to a seaman by the faithfulness of her life.

I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but I know I have been a very faithful one.

Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.

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