“Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.”
“A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.”
“A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.”
“Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.”
“Facing it — always facing it — that's the way to get through.”
“What all men are really after is some form, or perhaps only some formula, of peace.”
“The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”
“A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.”
“Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.”
“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
“As to honor -- you know -- it's a very fine mediaeval inheritance which women never got hold of. It wasn't theirs.”
“To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.”
“An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.”
“They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.”
“The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.”
“To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.”
“History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.”
“The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.”
“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.”
“The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement -- but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.”
“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more --the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort --to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires --and expires, too soon, too soon --before life itself.”
“Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.”
“Going home must be like going to render an account.”
“Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.”
“You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.”
“A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.”
“It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.”
“Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.”
“It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine.”
“There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.”