And, as doth be human, I brake my rule straightway in the beginning. - William Hope Hodgson

I am not at sea because I object to bad treatment, poor food, poor wages, and worse prospects. I am not at sea because very early I discovered that it is a comfortless, weariful and thankless life—a life compact of hardness and sordidness such as shore people can scarcely conceive. I am not at sea because I dislike being a pawn with the sea for a board and the shipowners for players.

And mayhap there to be no mystery in the thing; but a score of natural explainings, if that I did know, or had patience to think long enough upon such.

We truly to think that the world doth even now be old; and this to have seemed a true thing unto every age that ever did live.