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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
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Herman Melville |
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3f2b063
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There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath...
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siren
sirens
moby-dick
mermaids
sea
ocean
supernatural
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Herman Melville |
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b24e050
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Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant, I act under orders.
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revenge
moby-dick
melville
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Herman Melville |
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def1145
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"In school I ended up writing three different papers on "The Castaway" section of Moby-Dick, the chapter where the cabin boy Pip falls overboard and is driven mad by the empty immensity of what he finds himself floating in. And when I teach school now I always teach Crane's horrific "The Open Boat," and get all bent out of shape when the kids find the story dull or jaunty-adventurish: I want them to feel the same marrow-level dread of the oceanic I've always felt, the intuition of the sea as primordial nada, bottomless, depths inhabited by cackling tooth-studded things rising toward you at the rate a feather falls."
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moby-dick
oceanic
pip
the-castaway
the-ocean
the-sea
stephen-crane
jaws
sea
ocean
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David Foster Wallace |
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abf017e
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The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true-- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.
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sorrow
moby-dick
melancholy
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Herman Melville |
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c00bf40
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In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.
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whale
moby-dick
whales
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Herman Melville |
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b46b9bd
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But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.
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truth
profundity
moby-dick
ishmael
society
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Herman Melville |
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3917f99
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"The heroic and often tragic stories of American whalemen were renowned. They sailed the world's oceans and brought back tales filled with bravery, perseverance, endurance, and survival. They mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, sang, spun yarns, scrimshawed, and recorded their musings and observations in journals and letters. They survived boredom, backbreaking work, tempestuous seas, floggings, pirates, putrid food, and unimaginable cold. Enemies preyed on them in times of war, and competitors envied them in times of peace. Many whalemen died from violent encounters with whales and from terrible miscalculations about the unforgiving nature of nature itself. And through it all, whalemen, those "iron men in wooden boats" created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories that can still stir our emotions and animate the most primal part of our imaginations. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," proclaimed Herman Melville, and the epic story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history."
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history
harpoon
whaling
whale
moby-dick
whales
melville
ocean
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Eric Jay Dolin |
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1a5bf12
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One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. 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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literature
history
herman-melville
masterpiece
moby-dick
prose
english
quotes
novel
|
Herman Melville |
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8ba904b
|
but the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was none in his spade
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herman-melville
spade
moby-dick
|
Herman Melville |
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219ecbc
|
They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business.
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chinese-society
justinian
mind-your-own-business
pandects
funny
moby-dick
melville
laws
lol
|
Herman Melville |
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45ffb19
|
The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating them, till they are left living with half a heart and half a lung.
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moby-dick
|
Herman Melville |
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c50bb88
|
Start her, now; give 'em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy--start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool--cucumbers is the word--easy, easy--only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys--that's all. Start her!
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moby-dick
|
Herman Melville |
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6e64a71
|
"There is mystery in everything," Herman whispered, almost to himself. "And so there is poetry in everything. Even something as monstrous as a whale. But how to unlock its poetry."
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moby-dick
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Mark Beauregard |
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2c27588
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How I snuffed that Tartar air!--how I spurned that turnpike earth!--that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records.
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moby-dick
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Herman Melville |
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cab9037
|
"To be in the presence of a great leader is to know a blighted soul who has managed to make the darkness work for him. Ishmael says it best: "For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but a disease." In chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck," Melville show us how susceptible we ordinary people are to the seductive power of a great and demented man."
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moby-dick
power
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Nathaniel Philbrick |