The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.
We were alone. Where, I could not say, hardly imagine. All was black, and such a dense black that, after some minutes, my eyes had not been able to discern even the faintest glimmer.
With happiness as with health: to enjoy it, one should be deprived of it occasionally.
The possession of wealth leads almost inevitably to its abuse. It is the chief, if not the only, cause of evils which desolate this world below. The thirst for gold is responsible for the most regrettable lapses into sin.
In consequence of inventing machines, men will be devoured by them.
Dost thou not understand that there are two distinct forces in us, that of the soul and that of the body, that is, a movement and a regulator?
Dost thou know what life is, my child? Hast thou comprehended the action of those springs which produce existence? Hast thou examined thyself?
When the mind once allows a doubt to gain entrance, the value of deeds performed grow less, their character changes, we forget the past and dread the future.
Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English.
Now, when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records, and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general meeting, and the club is fully constituted.
The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence.
Solitude, isolation, are painful things and beyond human endurance.
An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish.
A true Englishman doesn't joke when he is talking about so serious a thing as a wager.
He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem.
It must be that a man who shuts himself up between four walls must lose the faculty of associating ideas and words.
Put two ships in the open sea, without wind or tide, and, at last, they will come together. Throw two planets into space, and they will fall one on the other. Place two enemies in the midst of a crowd, and they will inevitably meet; it is a fatality, a question of time; that is all.
When science has sent forth her fiat - it is only to hear and obey.
'Movement is life;' and it is well to be able to forget the past, and kill the present by continual change.
Put two Yankees in a room together, and in an hour they will each have gained ten dollars from the other.
