Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.

The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.

A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.

For a bag of pepper, they could cut each other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls... The bizarre obstinacy of that desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes; the unknown seas, the loathsome diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence and despair. It made them great! By heavens! It made them heroic; and it made them pathetic, too, in their craving for trade with the inflexible death levying its toll on young and old

The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.

Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.