Quotes from Herman Melville

El mundo es un barco que pasa temporalmente, sin realizar un viaje completo.

Was not Saul of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a similar fright? I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense.

Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I obey? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that.

Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without the least quivering of his own.

Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations.

But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck.

El valor más útil y digno de confianza es el que surge de la estimación realista del peligro encontrado, sino que un hombre totalmente sin miedo es un compañero mucho mas peligroso que un cobarde.

And so the universal thump is passed around

Dough-boy's whole life was one continual lip-quiver.

Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of Christendom

There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.

Las noches, estrelladas y solemnes, parecían altivas damas en terciopelos enjoyados.

Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there?

Why, thou monkey, we've been cruising now hard upon three years and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth when thou art up there.

How obvious it is it, too, that this necessity for the whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase.

I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. "Aye, aye," said

Whatever the validity of that claim, there is no doubt that it is among the greatest American novels, rich in allegory and symbolism, capable of being appreciated on many different levels; a book of profound depths and sonorities that continue to resonate in the mind long after one has put it down.

man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object—that final and romantic object, too many would have turned from in disgust.

And in the whale he created the symbol par excellence of malevolent power at work in an indifferent universe

But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand, dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating?

My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all.

Soon ranging up by his flask, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then ranging up from another fling.