“I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting.”

“Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.”

“It may seem contradictory, but in the languid tropics one spends more time contemplating those great good things of sound and sight and smell.”

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

“To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of the world, the Indian Ocean and Atlantic being but its arms...Thus this mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world’s whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of Earth. Lifted by those eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.”

“Billis turned to study the rare sight of moonlight upon tropic waters with palm trees along the shore and a ship at the dock. The world was beautiful that night. It was beautiful as only a tropic night on some distant island can be beautiful.”

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.”

“I have come to an unalterable decision - to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots.”

“There was another island! ….an island of the sea, a jewel of the vast ocean. It was small. Like a jewel, it could be perceived in one loving glance. It was neat. It had majestic cliffs facing the open sea. It had a jagged hill to give it character. "

“A sea so blue, so blue, it makes the sky seem pale."

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

"It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living."

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”