Quotes from Herman Melville

To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it.

And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnations of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens.

it's easy to be sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible.

Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can't afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don't jump any more. 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. But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again.

the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth. No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over the wildest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale did in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies

En este mundo, compañeros, el Pecado, si paga el viaje, puede ir libremente, y sin pasaporte, mientras que la Virtud, si es pobre, es detenida en todas las fronteras.

Çünkü melek dediÄŸin kendini s?k? s?k? dizginleyen bir köpek bal???ndan baÅŸka bir ÅŸey deÄŸildir.

Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water

For not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events,—as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to.

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality. He

So that here, in the real living experience of living men, the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface); and that still more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have come from the Holy Land by an underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the whalemen.

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.

The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. What

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament?

Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about — however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way — either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content. Again

Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

It is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one.

No se lo que puede llegar, pero sea lo que sea, iré hacia ello riéndome

for immortality is but ubiquity in time);

Me parece que hemos confundido mucho esta cuestión de la Vida y la Muerte. Me parece que lo que llaman mi sombra aquí en la tierra es mi substancia auténtica. Me parece que, al mirar las cosas espirituales, somo demasiado como ostras que observan el sol a través del agua y piensan que la densa agua es la mas fina de las atmosferas.

because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

My own opinion is, that however this one-sided horn may really be used by the Narwhal—however that may be—it would certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets.

En yüce hakikat iÅŸte bu karas?z, k?y?s?z, bizatihi Tanr? kadar uçsuz bucaks?z halde gizlidir.

When Angelo paints even God the Father in human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings.