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dd557c4
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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
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laughter
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Herman Melville |
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811e1b7
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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
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Herman Melville |
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3eb2e0a
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It is not down on any map; true places never are.
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Herman Melville |
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2a36132
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Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.
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sobriety
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Herman Melville |
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b4b0650
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As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
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Herman Melville |
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923e802
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Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I a..
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depression
negativity
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Herman Melville |
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9dfd713
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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
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Herman Melville |
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65772b8
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I try all things, I achieve what I can.
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Herman Melville |
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433d28c
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I would prefer not to.
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secret
nobody
melville
puzzle
mystery
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Herman Melville |
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4cb077e
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Ignorance is the parent of fear.
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fear
ignorance
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Herman Melville |
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f409d7e
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Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eter..
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Herman Melville |
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6661c3e
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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Herman Melville |
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b50a26f
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for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
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Herman Melville |
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b5089d2
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and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
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Herman Melville |
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66dd9ca
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Call me Ishmael.
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opening-lines
introduction
sobriquet
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Herman Melville |
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1a1b89b
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to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.
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Herman Melville |
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877f86f
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.
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Herman Melville |
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3b7b2eb
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There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
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Herman Melville |
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27045d2
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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.
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Herman Melville |
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4182d76
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Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.
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Herman Melville |
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9bd080f
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Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Me thinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.
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Herman Melville |
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077ae2d
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It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.
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Herman Melville |
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043280c
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Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its jagged edges.
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Herman Melville |
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d2a6200
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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Herman Melville |
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9e7f082
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To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For ..
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Herman Melville |
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a2aa307
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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Herman Melville |
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a9b891a
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Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan hap..
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Herman Melville |
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2cc1a01
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Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
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Herman Melville |
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4cd3c64
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Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me, and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-labourers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking ..
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Herman Melville |
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76bdd71
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The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of th..
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madness
lovecraft
the-sea
sublime
horror
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Herman Melville |
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3f78384
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Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure..... Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle , and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?
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nature
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Herman Melville |
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5fbbffb
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Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras.
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philosophy
historical
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Herman Melville |
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92a8c20
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All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.
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mortality
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Herman Melville |
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cd53a73
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Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.
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wisdom
woe
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Herman Melville |
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d12acc4
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Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.
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Herman Melville |
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9c9668b
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In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
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Herman Melville |
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dbbecff
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Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I ac..
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Herman Melville |
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58fb955
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For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught--nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
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Herman Melville |
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77463f1
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But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.
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Herman Melville |
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3144652
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
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Herman Melville |
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dd2071d
|
There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.
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Herman Melville |
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38b3566
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In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
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moby-dick
|
Herman Melville |
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c0e1d9b
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.
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Herman Melville |
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3a0b0d0
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Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a ..
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universe
whiteness
terrorism
terror
|
Herman Melville |