To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief.” — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed —… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head--no intricate game… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of its tormented flaming life; and I have… — 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
“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“That over these sea pastures, wide rolling watery prairies, and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall,… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“In certain matters, some sailors even in mature life remain unsophisticated enough. But a young seafarer of the disposition of our athletic… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:--… — 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… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Best followed now is this life, by hurrying, like itself, to a close. Few things remain. He was repulsed in efforts after… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling.… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duelist at his foe, blindly… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,—though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“I say, White-Jacket, d'ye mind me? there never was a very great man yet who spent all his life inland. A snuff… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues… — 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
“Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay… — 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… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“(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… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“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… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“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… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
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… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
