Quotes from Herman Melville

Queequeg no care what god made him shark,' said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.

But people seem to have a great love for names; for to know a great many names, seems to look like knowing a good many things; though I should not be surprised, if there were a great many more names than things in the world.

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, though canst never return!

the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures.

With no perceptible trace of the vainglorious about him, rather with the offhand unaffectedness of natural regality, he seemed to accept the spontaneous homage of his shipmates.

As we still ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the tower serially disposed in order of their magnitude: gannets, black and speckled haglets, jays, sea hens, sperm-whale birds, gulls of all varieties -- thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another in senatorial array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated fly in a great piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary's chicken sounds his continual challenge and alarm.

Song of the Paddlers Dip, dip, in the brine our paddles dip, Dip, dip, the fins of our swimming ship! How the waters part, As on we dart; Our sharp prows fly, And curl on high, As the upright fin of the rushing shark, Rushing fast and far on his flying mark! Like him we prey; Like him we slay; Swim on the foe, Our prow a blow!

My lord, it is easier for some men to be saints, than for others not to be sinners.

Lord, when shall we be done growing?

As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest oaks when prostate, so from the points which the whale's eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.

I joy that Death is this Democrat; and hopeless of all other real and permanent democracies, still hug the thought, that though in life some heads are crowned with gold, and some bound round with thorns, yet chisel them how they will, head-stones are all alike.

Åžöyle dolu dolu gülmek muhteÅŸem bir ÅŸeydir, ama böyle bir f?rsat insan?n eline nadiren geçer; çoÄŸunlukla kederin elindedir.

The cheeks of his soul collapsed in him, he dashed himself in blind fury and swift madness against the wall, and fell dabbling in the vomit of his loathed identity.

Evet, dünya sefer halinde, henüz yolculuÄŸunu tamamlamam?? bir gemidir ve kürsü de onun provas?d?r.

Tell a good man that he is free to commit murder, — will he murder? Tell a murderer that at the peril of his soul he indulges in murderous thoughts, — will that make him a saint?

The man oppressed with cares, he can not love; the man of gloom finds not the god.

It was in the summer of 1842

His education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate.

I was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks.

It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers, - it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.

In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters

They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.

Thinking, thinking—a wheel I cannot stop; pure want of sleep it is that turns it.

He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.