The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental pretence but an idea.

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

the mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future

All one's work might have been better done; but this is a sort of reflection a worker must put aside courageously if he doesn't mean every one of his conceptions to remain forever a private vision, an evanescent reverie.

The interior deprives men of their senses. Here, the eerie stillness of the wilderness and the darkness of night render the men both deaf and blind. Without eyes or ears, they have no frame of reference-and without a frame of reference, they have no clear identities.

Youth is insolent; it is its right - its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence.

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".