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.

The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

The ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all.

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

The vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.