I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.

The last thing a woman will consent to in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence.

The sea never changes and its works, for all the talks of men, are wrapped in mystery.

And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.