I'd like to be born the son of a duke with 90,000 pounds a year, on an enormous estate.... And I'd like to have the most enormous library, and I'd like to think that I could read those books forever and forever, and die unlamented, unknown, unsung, unhonored - and packed with information.

Travellers, like poets, are mostly an angry race: by falling into a daily fit of passion, I proved to the governor and his son, who were profuse in their attentions, that I was in earnest.

Of the gladdest moments in human life...is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands.

One cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, themagic Laby'rinth's single clue.

When doctors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng?

All so-called revealed religions consist mainly of three portions, a cosmogony more or less mythical, a history more or less falsified, and a moral code more or less pure.