Never test another man by your own weakness.
And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary mo...
I would just as soon have abused the old village church at home for not being a cathedral.
The horror! The horror!
Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.
Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
In a few moments all the stars came out above the intense blackness of the earth and the great lagoon gleaming suddenly with reflected lights resembled an oval patch of night sky flung down into the h...
How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?
Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whisperi...
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.
The mind of man is capable of anything.
He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as though fleeing before our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle and dismal influe...
He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites and escapes.
We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--- those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties, --- ev...
The conquest of the earth is not a pretty thing.
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.
The hair of his face, on the contrary, carroty and flaming, resembled a growth of copper wire clipped short to the line of the lip; while, no matter how close he shaved, fiery metallic gleams passed,...
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the takingit away from those who have a different complexion or slightlyflatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you lookinto it too much....
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys,...