I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts.

Happiness, happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.

One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse.

Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out".

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

Never test another man by your own weakness.

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.