He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness of his outlook.

A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas.

Don't you forget what's divine in the Russian soul-and that's resignation.

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.

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

For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.