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1d34527
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
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Herman Melville |
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bc36541
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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 avast 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. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, ..
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Herman Melville |
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3b53743
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Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
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Herman Melville |
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e192599
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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 when 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 accoun..
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modified
so
this
okay
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Herman Melville |
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d94a02b
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It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O ma..
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strength
self
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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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049fb9c
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For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.
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Herman Melville |
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685eea2
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Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.
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free-will
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Herman Melville |
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a8f7eaf
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Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore? But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God- so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be i..
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Herman Melville |
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8e22913
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Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about--however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way-- either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.
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Herman Melville |
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83d3466
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Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.
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Herman Melville |
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124f04e
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Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.
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Herman Melville |
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368d52e
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Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; 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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0bc4ba2
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If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions ev..
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Herman Melville |
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545a181
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All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.
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madness
sanity
instrumental-rationality
means
modern-age
efficiency
ends
modernity
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Herman Melville |
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97de884
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For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.
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Herman Melville |
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6e74501
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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
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Herman Melville |
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f477eb6
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Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs
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Herman Melville |
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28fd64c
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We cannibals must help these Christians.
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Herman Melville |
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3136655
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w'n lSyd ldh~ l yrtH 'bda. lSyd ldh~ l wTn lh. wlt~ 'qSdh m tzl tTyr 'mm~; w'n s'tb`h, m` 'nh qdtn~ l~ mwr ljbl,
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Herman Melville |
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bc6a21f
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Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
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Herman Melville |
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7185ea8
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T]hen all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
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time
maritime
sea
ocean
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Herman Melville |
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baf8cd9
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
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Herman Melville |
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42e6e2c
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Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and th..
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Herman Melville |
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29ead10
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All mortal greatness is but disease.
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Herman Melville |
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60e65b1
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T]here is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
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men
humanity
human-condition
beasts
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Herman Melville |
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ef06b92
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The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.
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Herman Melville |
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bade1d0
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Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
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Herman Melville |
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e3a06ce
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Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
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Herman Melville |
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0505519
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There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:-- through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor..
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Herman Melville |
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b79bf4d
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To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
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pain
pity
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Herman Melville |
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8d9f9c1
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that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
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Herman Melville |
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bb31496
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God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart forever; the vulture the very creature he creates.
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Herman Melville |
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7059073
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But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright son has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves. Because they have no memory . . . because they are not human.
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Herman Melville |
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d8d8c3b
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the great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open...
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wonder
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Herman Melville |
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e072eaf
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Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.
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Herman Melville |
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61a41e6
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The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
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Herman Melville |
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ab4f7b3
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Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.
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Herman Melville |
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20f8540
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My body is but the lees of my better being.
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Herman Melville |
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19b8881
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However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and to be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
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Herman Melville |
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84c467b
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I am past scorching; not easily can'st thou scorch a scar.
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Herman Melville |
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a7ba7bc
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Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!
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satanic
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Herman Melville |
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d3ea793
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Preferiria no hacerlo
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Herman Melville |
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b0b18d1
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Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from that same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
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Herman Melville |