“All a man can betray is his conscience.”

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.

That’s why love is so inseparable from any talk about truth and death, because we know that love is fundamentally a death of an old self that was isolated and the emergence of a new self now entangled with another self, the self that you fall in love with.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake.

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force–nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.

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.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.

But it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker – may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!

As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.

We live as we dream – alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.

Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.

When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.

My own momma turned her back on me, and that’s my momma.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Fidelity – a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

We ignore our feelings a lot, I realize. Many of us have to… until they really bite us in the butt.

In politics it is necessary either to betray one’s country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.

Anyone who claims that all religions are the same betrays not only an ignorance of all religions but also a caricatured view of even the best-known ones. Every religion at its core is exclusive.

People know when they’ve betrayed themselves. They are very much aware when they are not honest with themselves. They hear the voice that says, “You shouldn’t have said that” or “You know that’s not right.”