Comfort is tedious when it lasts too long. - Elizabeth Drew Stoddard

A habit grew upon me of consulting the sea as soon as I rose in the morning. Its aspect decided how my day would be spent. I watched it at last with constant study of its changes, seeking to understand its effect upon me mentally, and ever attracted by its awful materiality, for it always talked to me of the ease with which it could drown me. I was drawn to its shores by night; its vague sphere, swayed by some influence mightier than itself, which made its voice articulate, drew my soul out beside it, to utter speech for speech.

The country is crazy with barrenness, and the sea mocks it with its terrible beauty.

Never does the soul feel so far from human life as when a man finds himself alone in the vistas of the moon, either in the streets of a sleeping city, the avenues of the woods, or by the border of the sea. Earth, swayed perhaps by her powerful satellite, withdraws her sympathy from him and he wanders in a white void, wondering if he was born to be thus annulled.