Quotes from Herman Melville

Benim üniversitem Yale de deÄŸildi Harvard da, bir balina gemisiydi.

No man can ever feel his own identity aright excepr his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essence, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.

For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be, if not called forth by this very harmlessness itself?

Now, contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love; and thus was it with respect to Wilson. No one could look at him without conceiving a strong dislike, or a cordial desire to entertain such a feeling the first favourable opportunity. There was such an intolerable air of conceit about this man that it was almost as much as one could do to refrain from running up and affronting him.

A través de todos sus fantasmagóricos tatuajes, yo creía ver las huellas de un corazón sencillo y honrado; y en sus grandes ojos profundos, ferozmente negros y valientes, parecía haber muestras de un espíritu que se atrevería contra mil diablos.

palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on

But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels.

However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing , and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think.

A te vengo, balena che tutto distruggi ma non vinci: fino all'ultimo lotto con te; dal cuore dell'inferno ti trafiggo; in nome dell'odio, vomito a te l'ultimo mio respiro.

I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him.

Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.

in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God — so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing — straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!

Why, they are cannibals!' said Toby on one occasion when I eulogized the tribe. 'Granted,' I replied, 'but a more humane, gentlemanly and amiable set of epicures do not probably exist in the Pacific.' But

so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee

What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad -- Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! - Capt. Ahab.

Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of Saco.

There is scarcely anything when a man is in difficulties that he is more disposed to look upon with abhorrence than a rightabout retrograde movement—a systematic going over of the already trodden ground: and especially if he has a love of adventure, such a course appears indescribably repulsive, so long as there remains the least hope to be derived from braving untried difficulties. It

For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner—for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

post-mortemizing of

Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving in the host of the God of War—Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why, then, is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon; because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force. 25

Quiqueg era como George Washington desarrollado a lo caníbal.