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

The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealth, the germs of empires.

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make dspair pause. For in truth, we who are creatures of impulse, are creatures of despair.

That faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer.

The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth.

Kisses are the remnants of paradise.

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.