I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and I scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise.

To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Had be been Shakespeare, he would then have written Troilus and Cressidato brand the offending sex; but being only a little dog, he began to bite them.

The mark of a Scot of all classes [is that] he ... remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Jealousy is the most radical primeval and naked form of admiration in war paint, so to speak.