Quotes from Herman Melville

He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds.

Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle

But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! 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.

How it is I know not, but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other, and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg – a cosy, loving pair.

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them.

In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.

creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.

We know not what we do when we hate.

The United States wore empire on its brow

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

Hope proves a man deathless.

It's worth a fellow's while to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep

as intense heat and cold, though unlike, produce like sensations, so innocence and guilt, when, through casual association with mental pain, stamping any visible impress, use one seal- a hacked one.

Yonder, to windward, all is blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward—I see it lightens up there; but not with the lightning.

But for anything deeper, I am not certain whether to know the world and to know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which while they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or nothing of the other.

Who's got some paregoric? said Stubb, he has the stomach-ache, I'm afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It's the first foul wind I ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so before? it must be, he's lost his tiller.

Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it.

Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven

The great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last.

Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.

A short life to them, and a jolly death.

But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me.

Wherein, he resembled my Right Reverend friend, Bishop Berkeley - truly, one of your lords spiritual - who, metaphysically speaking, holding all objects to be mere optical delusions, was, notwithstanding, extremely matter-of-fact in all matters touching matter itself. Besides being pervious to the points of pins, and possessing a palate capable of appreciating plum-puddings: - which sentence reads off like a pattering of hailstones.

Ahab era inaccesible socialmente [...]. Vivía en el mundo como vivieran en el Misuri colonizado los últimos osos grises. Y así como al término del estío aquel Lotario de las selvas se encerraba en el tronco de un árbol a pasar el tiempo chupándose las patas, así Ahab se encerraba, en su inclemente ancianidad, en el tronco hueco de su propio cuerpo, comiéndose las lúgubres patas de su propia melancolía.