I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day - and the sitting down is all.

I like what is in the work -- the chance to find yourself.

Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship's wake.

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.

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

As to honor - you know - it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.

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.