- Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point... Something intensely human, narrow, and definite pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more readily than huge occurrences and catastrophes.
- Keep any line of knowledge ten years and some other line will intersect it.
- Qu'est ce qu'il a fait? What has he done? That was Napoleon's test. What have you done?
- (In the summer), one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in natural costume,--buy a watermelon for a halfpenny,--split it, and scoop out the middle,--sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, and feast upon the pulp.
- The great mystery of God's providence is the permitted crushing out of flowering instincts. Life is maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sentiments.
- "Is this the mighty ocean?--is this all?" says the Princess in Gebir.