A man's most open actions have a secret side to them. |
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. Topics: Life |
Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. |
There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. |
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. |
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. |
Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters. |
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. |
As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook. |
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. |
Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it. |
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. |
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth. |
In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility. |
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. |
Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys. |
Going home must be like going to render an account. |
It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine. |
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness. |