A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, he said, for he will be going out on a day he shouldn't. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again.

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.

It gave me a moment of exquisite satisfaction to find myself moving away from civilisation in this rude canvas canoe of a model that has served primitive races since men first went to sea.

In a good play every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or apple.