The vision seemed to enter the house with me-the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart-the heart of a conquering darkness.

Necessity, they say, is mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

A fool has more ideas than a wise man can foresee.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

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.

Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.