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59aad60
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Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
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Herman Melville |
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eb19d19
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But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought. Again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet that angel must hang!"
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Herman Melville |
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0b9508f
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The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he ..
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Herman Melville |
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00b2810
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Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!
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Herman Melville |
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4bae9b4
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Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.
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mental
intellect
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Herman Melville |
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ab50ad4
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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing--mores the pity.
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Herman Melville |
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4f57f9d
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But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a ..
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Herman Melville |
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bff95ba
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At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so sound before
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Herman Melville |
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19386b4
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I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass.
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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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878003c
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I say, I can not identify that thing which is called happiness, that thing whose token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks different food from happiness, for I think I have a suspicion of what it is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of the absence of happiness, and w..
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Herman Melville |
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5e56ed3
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Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this..
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the-sphinx
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Herman Melville |
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2e00a6d
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But thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
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Herman Melville |
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24c879d
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Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.
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Herman Melville |
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f332535
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Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. (moby dick chap 29 p123)
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Herman Melville |
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bd3752f
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more?
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Herman Melville |
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13ddc84
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Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the art of smoking.
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Herman Melville |
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28a0c17
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for all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal...
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Herman Melville |
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9100111
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Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in ..
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Herman Melville |
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e809fed
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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.
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mortality
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Herman Melville |
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607ca41
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Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness
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Herman Melville |
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3adefac
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The pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.
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prophecy
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Herman Melville |
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3afd46f
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Consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!
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Herman Melville |
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9d70098
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In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority.
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Herman Melville |
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d6d3bbd
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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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Herman Melville |
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a092c3d
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So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. they err who would assert that invariable this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. An when at last it i..
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suffering
human-misery
melville
pity
misery
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Herman Melville |
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f343383
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The stillness of the calm is awful. His voice begins to grow strange and portentous. He feels it in him like something swallowed too big for the esophagus. It keeps up a sort of involuntary interior humming in him, like a live beetle. His cranium is a dome full of reverberations. The hollows of his very bones are as whispering galleries. He is afraid to speak loud, lest he be stunned; like the man in the bass drum.
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Herman Melville |
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72aafad
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The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. The..
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Herman Melville |
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0a100fd
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an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
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peril
danger
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Herman Melville |
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2d019db
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Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!" deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood."
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Herman Melville |
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0799fc5
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Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home!
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Herman Melville |
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fcbce4e
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This slavery breeds ugly passions in man.
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Herman Melville |
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4f33ae6
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Nature cared not a jot.
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Herman Melville |
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a326d1f
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Ahab and aguish lay stretched together in one hammock.
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pain
beautiful-language
captain-ahab
anguish
physical-pain
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Herman Melville |
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331aa94
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In this world, headwinds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim).
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Herman Melville |
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79ff693
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whdhh lqw@ lmdhsh@ fy dhnab lHwt l tnHw 'bd l`rql@ ltWthny lrshyq fy Hrkth, Hyth lyusr lrshyq ytmwWj mn khll jbrwt lqw@. bl l`ks hw lSHyH: fn tlk lHrkt tstmd jmlh lbhr mnh, flqw@ lHq l tushwWih ljml 'w lnsjm, wnm tmnHh llshy lqwy, wfy kl shy jmyl asr ljml tl`b lqw@ dwr sHry.
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Herman Melville |
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1d9e2db
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it is better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one.
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Herman Melville |
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f037b29
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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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782123f
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The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.
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Herman Melville |
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a0fc027
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The fiendlike skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth.
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violence
war
white-people
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Herman Melville |
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4ef8ca9
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Even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead." 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. 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 sunn..
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Herman Melville |
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2235f44
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Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life.
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Herman Melville |
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35a8961
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for we all are dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending..
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Herman Melville |
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240bb38
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Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is - which was the only way he could get there - thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely his was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing..
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Herman Melville |