God is for men, and religion for women.

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.

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.

He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know.

To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts ... all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.

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

The blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our conversation and made it a thing of empty sounds.