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.

For there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence.

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.

Yet, when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force is a but a rotten reed to lean upon.

Some of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and affection, have seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze. For it is a gale of wind that makes the sea look old.

A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.

Everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places.