And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.

We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive - survive the condemnations, survive the halter, by Jove! And there are things - they look small enough sometimes too - by which some of us are totally and completely undone.

A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.

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