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In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, for knowledge, and even beauty is only a vein sticking up for appearances as th...more

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The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves or on whom she simply depends is want of courage.

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The sea, perhaps because of its saltiness, roughens the outside but keeps sweet the kernel of its servants' soul.

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All a man can betray is his conscience.

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Facing it-always facing it-that's the way to get through. Face it!

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The sea - the truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage hardihood endurance faithfulness - has ever been...more

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And yet I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency. An elemental force is ruthlessly frank

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He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?

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And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and...more

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She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there seemed to be no forgiveness for such a tr...more

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How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

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All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.

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And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no di...more

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This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men...more