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0595619
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Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then!
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Herman Melville |
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8ba904b
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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
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Herman Melville |
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eba2dfa
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then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.
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madness
darkness
fire
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Herman Melville |
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ca14718
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At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom - the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow.
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young-at-heart
old-age
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Herman Melville |
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f432683
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I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward."
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Herman Melville |
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77fe054
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Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point wit..
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Herman Melville |
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9e020bc
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But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.
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Herman Melville |
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77582e7
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Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the million miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. 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.
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Herman Melville |
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160aea9
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For in their interflowing aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours,--Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan,--possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian water do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnis..
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Herman Melville |
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7797d87
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We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard sent on through the wilderness of untried things...
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inspirational-quotes
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Herman Melville |
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0fd74a4
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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 grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
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Herman Melville |
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21f3385
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For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
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Herman Melville |
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57b5e48
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Of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are the most apt to get out of order.
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mankind
manipulation
resilience
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Herman Melville |
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59a05b9
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Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?
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Herman Melville |
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85ace1a
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Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's bro..
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Herman Melville |
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8b46043
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Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.
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Herman Melville |
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f7ec357
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Of erections how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!
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saint-peter
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Herman Melville |
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6ff694e
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nameless miseries of the numberless mortals
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Herman Melville |
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b4e97a5
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Ignorance is the parent of fear ...
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wisdom
ignorance
knowledge
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Herman Melville |
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0c2bf4d
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Pierre little foresaw that this world hath a secret deeper than beauty, and Life some burdens heavier than death.
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Herman Melville |
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ad1e45a
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I try all things; I achieve what I can.
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Herman Melville |
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81e2c95
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With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this.
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Herman Melville |
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70fada0
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I had the whole road to myself, for no one was yet stirring, and I walked on, with a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was on my back, and from the end of my brother's rifle hung a small bundle of my clothes. My fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and I thought that this indeed was the way to begin life, with a gun in your hand!
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Herman Melville |
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9b76ac9
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But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands ..
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the-ocean
sea
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Herman Melville |
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a76791a
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hb 'nn 'khT'n khT' fdH fy fhm ms'l@ lHy@ wlmwt. hb 'n m ysmwnh `l~ hdhh l'rD "Zly" nm hw jwhry lSHyH. hb 'nn Hyn nnZr l~ l'mwr lrwHy@ nshbh lsrTn ldhy yr~ lshms mn khll lm fyZn 'n lm lkthyf hw 'shd 'nw` lhw shffy@! hb 'n jsdy lys l lHm~ ldhy y'wy lyh wjwdy l'fDl. fly'khdh jsdy mn sh fnh lys 'n!"
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Herman Melville |
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2020c79
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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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63d061f
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and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.
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Herman Melville |
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5bc94dc
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if some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. events, not books, should be forbid.
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Herman Melville |
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512fe92
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It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his tria..
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Herman Melville |
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a57e4f7
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And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us.
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Herman Melville |
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15659e0
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And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From far up the Hudson, beyond ..
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Herman Melville |
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924e775
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wlkn hdh lkhawar l`rD sm@ tkd t`m kl lky'nt lty t`ysh fy lqTy`, fljwmys lbry@ fy lGrb l'mryky - dht l'`rf k'lbd l'swd - tHtshd fy '`dd tblG `shrt l'lwf, wtfr hrb@ 'mm khyWl wHd wt'ml 'yD jmy` bny lbshr: kyf ykwnwn mHtshdyn fy HZyr@ ysmwnh q`@ lmsrH, fdh 'undhrw mHD ndhr Tfyf bsht`l lnr ndf`w fy hyT wmyT nHw lmnfdh, mtjmhryn mtkdsyn yT' b`Dhm b`D, wydf` 'Hdhm lakhr l~ lmwt dwn shfq!
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Herman Melville |
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45ffb19
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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
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Herman Melville |
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5b6d621
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What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more.
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the-pipe
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Herman Melville |
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5b80a97
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That over these sea pastures, wide rolling watery prairies, and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like some slumberers in their beds; the ever rolling waves but made so by the restlessness.
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seascape
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Herman Melville |
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74d827f
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In fact, tell him I've diddled him, and perhaps somebody else.
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Herman Melville |
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219ecbc
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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
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Herman Melville |
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537574b
|
m 'shd m 'Htqr l'rD dht lHwjz wltwt wljwzt! tlk lTryq l`m@ lty khdWdth n`l l`bwdy@ wHwfrh! wtHwWltu l~ l`jb b`Zm@ lbHr ldhy l tnTb` fyh athr.
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Herman Melville |
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7774c30
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From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space.
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Herman Melville |
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c3b8c8f
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A high degree of refinement, however, does not seem to subdue our wicked propensities so much after all; and were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged.
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Herman Melville |
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7021e79
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Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,--though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,-- in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every ..
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Herman Melville |
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52b2bdd
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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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6d716ff
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Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks glasses! of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if stri..
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Herman Melville |
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f92b31f
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fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon--so like a corkscrew now--was flung
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Herman Melville |