The sea – this truth must be confessed – has no generosity. No display of manly qualities – courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness – has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
Droll thing life is – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself – that comes too late – a crop of inextinguishable regrets.
There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more.
There is a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride, beyond mere skill, almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art – which is art.
You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence.
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come and wait for the turn of the tide.
The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don’t fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it.
The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.
A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.
A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.
I can’t imagine a human being so hard up for something to do as to quarrel with me.
Society was calling to its accomplished child to come, to be taken care of, to be instructed, to be judged, to be condemned; it called him to return to that rubbish heap from which he had wandered away, so that justice could be done.
The sea never changes and its works, for all the talks of men, are wrapped in mystery.
There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope.
I can’t tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make dspair pause. For in truth, we who are creatures of impulse, are creatures of despair.
As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.
Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake.
The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas.