And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all.

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honorable defeat to be a form of victory.

There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water than his head could carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked old wild sea-songs, minding nobody... Often I have heard the house shaking with Yo-ho-ho and a bottle and rum, all the neighbours joining in for dear life with the fear of death upon them and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark. Fiften men on the dead man's chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil have done for the rest. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.

To have suffered ... sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth and has to be learned in the fire.

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.