The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has he ...enterprise? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation; not becau...se any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive you are free of them yourself is pleasant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What though the traveler tell us of the ruins of Egypt, are we so sick or idle that we must sacrifice our America and today to som...e man's ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and Luxor are but names, or if their skeletons remain, still more desert sand and at length a wave of the Mediterranean Sea are needed to wash away the filth that attaches to their grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! here is Carnac for me. I behold the columns of a larger and purer temple.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them, not those which have a humane house alone. But I wished to ...see that seashore where man's works are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and comes ashore without a wharf for the landing; where the crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all you can say of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsummer you may sometimes see a strip of glassy smoothness on it, a few rods in width and man...y miles long, as if the surface were covered with a thin pellicle of oil, just as on a country pond.... Yet this same placid ocean, as civil now as a city's harbor, a place for ships and commerce, will ere long be lashed into sudden fury, and all its caves and cliffs will resound with tumult. It will ruthlessly heave these vessels to and fro, break them in pieces in its sandy or stony jaws, and deliver their crews to sea-monsters. It will play with them like seaweed, distend them like dead frogs, and carry them about, now high, now low, to show to the fishes, giving them a nibble. This gentle ocean will toss and tear the rag of a man's body like the father of mad bulls, and his relatives may be seen seeking the remnants for weeks along the strand. From some quiet inland hamlet they have rushed weeping to the unheard-of shore, and now stand uncertain where a sailor has recently been buried amid the sand-hills.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are certain things--as, a spider, a ghost, The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three--... That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most Is a thing they call the Sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sea--this truth must be confessed--has no generosity. No display of manly qualities--courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulne...ss--has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »