An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

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

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the august light of abiding memories.

Do not talk to me of Archimedes' lever. He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

The ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation