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.

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

There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I believe, why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds." Both these commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of property.

You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.

The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth.

We can never cease to be ourselves.

In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.