“What pen can describe this scene of marvellous horror; what pencil can portray it?”

Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance.

He must have travelled everywhere, at least in the spirit.

It must be, for there is a logic to everything on this earth and nothing is done without a reason, that God sometimes lets scientists discover.

It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason.

We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

So is man’s heart. The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of his superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world.

What darkness is to you is light is to me.

The Great Architect of the universe built it of good firm stuff.

The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment.

As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.

I am very bad at expressing tender sentiments. The very word ‘love’ frightens me.

The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the ‘Living Infinite.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one.

How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next!

In presence of Nature’s grand convulsions man is powerless.

Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.

One cannot be too careful in the selection of adjectives for descriptions. Words or compounds which describe precisely, and which convey exactly the right suggestions to the mind of the reader, are essential.

It was an unbelievable experience! The brakes, the g-forces and the power of the engine are beyond description.

One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a ‘binge’ writer – like a binge drinker. I go on binges.

The idea that hardware on networks should just be caches for movable process descriptions and the processes themselves goes back quite a ways.

I’m always described as ‘cocksure’ or ‘with a swagger,’ and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity.

A picture is never anything but its own plural description.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Or those who still believe that language is ‘only words’ and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.