I don't know but a book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf--at any rate it… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company.” — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behoves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not overlooking the… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich. — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.” — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“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;… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“(On Ralph Waldo Emerson)I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; and if he don't attain the bottom, why all the lead in Galena can't fashion the plummet that will. I'm not talking of Mr Emerson now -but of the whole… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“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… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“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… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“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… — Herman Melville Copy Share
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land. — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when-There she blows!-the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to… — Herman Melville Copy Share
