“The sea is the vast reservoir of Nature. The globe began with sea, so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it?”

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.

And whichsoever way thou goest, may fortune follow.

We see that science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.

A scholar has to know a little of everything.

What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?

Why lower oneself to taking pride from being American or British, when you can boast of being man!

Science, my boy, is composed of errors, but errors that it is right to make, for they lead step by step to the truth.

In the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced.

What I’d like to be above all is a writer.