Quotes from Herman Melville

any human thing supposed to be complete must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.

And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars?

What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of wailing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish.

La conciencia representa la herida cuya hemorragia nada puede contener.

In a world, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.

There howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronizing lee of churches. For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most abound in holiest vicinities.

Ma quando viaggiando non facciamo altro che inseguire i remoti misteri di cui sogniamo, o dare la caccia in modo straziante a quel fantasma demoniaco che prima o poi nuota davanti a ogni cuore umano; allora, quando diamo la caccia a cose del genere tutt'intorno a questo tondo globo, tali cose ci portano all'interno di sterili labirinti, oppure ci lasciano sommersi a metà strada.

Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm, and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when--There she blows!--the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again.

Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy!

wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her

I am one of those unfortunate persons to whom the sight of these animals are, at any time an insufferable annoyance.

Call me Ishmael

Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors

Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish.

By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.

Well, well; no more. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, black-smith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad? - What wert thou making there?

mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old?

With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies

As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub.

Moby Dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows.

Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!

But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul

As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight.

Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!