Quotes from Herman Melville

So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.

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.

Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.

In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb.

In old England the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and made garter-knights of; but, be your boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; be kicked by him; account his kicks honors; and on no account kick back; for you can't help yourself, wise Stubb.

It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely fortune--and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am on of those that never take on about princely fortunes, and I am quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud.

But what is worship?— to do the will of God? that is worship. And what is the will of God?— to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me— that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator.

Man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago.

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.

To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order.

Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?

Hither, and thither, on high, gilded the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology.

Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phædon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed...

Time, time; if I but only had the time

conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my

But the only thing to be considered here, is this - what kind of oil is used in coronations? Certainly it cannot be Olive Oil, or Maccasar Oil, nor Caster Oil, nor Bear's Oil, nor Train Oil, nor Cod-Liver Oil. What then can it possibly be but Sperm Oil in it's unmanufactured unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?

They tell me sir, that Stubb did once desert poor Pip, whose drowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his living skin. But I will never desert ye sir, as Stubb did him.

I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.

see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.