It Is Respectable To Have

History Repeats Itself, But The Special Call Of An Art Which Has Passed Away Is Never Reproduced. It Is As Utterly Gone Out Of The World As The Song Of A Destroyed Wild Bird.

One Ship Is Very Much Like Another And The Sea Is Always The Same. In The Immutability Of Their Surroundings The Foreign Shores, The Foreign Faces, The Changing Immensity Of Life, Glide Past, Veiled Not By A Sense Of Mystery But By A Slightly Disdainful Ignorance; For There Is Nothing Mysterious To A Seaman Unless It Be The Sea Itself, Which Is The Mistress Of His Existence And As Inscrutable As Destiny.

A Historian May Be An Artist Too, And A Novelist Is A Historian, The Preserver, The Keeper, The Expounder, Of Human Experience.

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 Moral Beauty By The Absolute Straightforwardness Of Its Appeal And By The Singleness Of Its Purpose.

For There Is Nothing Mysterious To A Seaman Unless It Be The Sea Itself, Which Is The Mistress Of His Existence.