For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
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.
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
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.
Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.
In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.
A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.
This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.
Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.
There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.
An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway.
There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten - before the end is told - even if there happens to be any end to it.
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.