There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

There is never enough time to say our last word-the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submission, revolt.

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

One ship is very much like another and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.

It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.

The artist in his calling of interpreter creates because he must. He is so much of a voice that, for him, silence is like death