“There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.”

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.

It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.

We can never cease to be ourselves.

A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.

Never test another man by your own weakness.

There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.

Everything can be found at sea according to the spirit of your quest.

God is for men, and religion for women.

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.

Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.

The ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all.

All roads are long which lead to one’s heart’s desire.

Everything belonged to him–but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.

Be patient with yourself. Be gentle with yourself. Know that all things are working in your favor. If you take one step toward the light of Spirit, Spirit will take five steps on your behalf.

I don’t want to take anything to the grave. I want to die used up and emptied out. I don’t want to carry around anything I don’t have to. I want to travel light.

The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.

Everyone claims they want the truth. Just not in all her bright entirety. We’d rather she visit in dim shades of light, that won’t hurt our eyes.

When the contrary magnetic poles were on the same side, there was an effect produced on the polarized ray, and thus magnetic force and light were proved to have relation to each other.

Love is love, even if it is illicit; like light remains light even in the darkness.

I happen to have discovered a direct relation between magnetism and light, also electricity and light, and the field it opens is so large and I think rich.

Light at the end of the tunnel? We don’t even have a tunnel; we don’t even know where the tunnel is.