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.

But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies.

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.

And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.