The good author is he who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul amongst criticisms.

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one.

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

the mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future

I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns.