Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank — but that's not the same thing. - Joseph Conrad

No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work, - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.

Having had to encounter single-handed during his period of eclipse many physical dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous element common to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats a man struggling with natural forces, alone, far from the eyes of his fellows.

I had been six years at sea, but had only seen Melbourne and Sydney, very good places, charming places in their way — but Bankok!