Quotes from Herman Melville

the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril

Now, Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. 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.

That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.

Oh! How immaterial are all materials!

What was sad in the world he did not superficially gainsay; what was glad in it he did not cynically slur; and all which was to him personally enjoyable, he gratefully took to his heart.

He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad.

and every one knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.

I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down, down, to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!

What a beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to ceiling, lines, or rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal satins.

I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical

Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connections?

While he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.

It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he's bound to hell.

There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.

one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duelist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six-inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab.

there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.

when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick.

I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild. mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.

if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned.

Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face—at least to my taste— his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart;

Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.

content with his own companionship;

But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.