Quotes from Herman Melville

Life's a journey that is homeward bound.

For here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming...

Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.

I'd rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other man

Como la gaviota sin tierra que, al atardecer, pliega las alas y se mece hasta dormirse entre el oleaje, al caer la noche el hombre de Nantucket, lejos de la tierra, recoge las velas y se echa a dormir, mientras bajo su almohada corren morsas y ballenas.

It is as sweet as early grass butter in April.

Así, este divino y misterioso Pacífico circunda la masa entera del mundo, hace de todas las costas una bahía y parece el corazón del mundo, que late con sus mareas. Henchido por sus eternas olas, es imposible no reconocer en él al dios seductor, es imposible no inclinarse ante él como ante Pan.

and for long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad.

Didn't want to try to: ain't one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows.

Bence gölgem olduÄŸu söylenen ÅŸey benim esas varl???m. Bence manevi ÅŸeylere bak???m?z denizin içinden güneÅŸe bakan ve üzerlerindeki kal?n su tabakas?n?n yaln?zca bir hava tabakas? olduÄŸunu düÅŸünen istiridyeler gibi.

Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face--at least to my taste-- his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul.

flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.

Cada ballenera lleva un buen número de cartas para varias naves: entregarlas a los destinatarios depende del mero azar de encontrarlos en los cuatro océanos. Así, muchas cartas nunca llegan a destino, y otras sólo son recibidas cuando ya han cumplido dos o tres años.

The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. 76

Why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city.

Hatta isteyen als?n vücudumu, samimiyim, o ben deÄŸilim. Ve böylece yaÅŸas?n Nantucket, vars?n balinazede bir tekne gelsin als?n vücudumu, yeter ki dokunmas?nlar Jüpiter'in kendisinin bile alamad??? ruhuma.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

The higher the intelligence, the more faith, and the less credulity; Gabriel rejects more than we, but out-believes us all.

upon the tarnished head-boards, nearby, appeared, in stately capitals, once gilt, the ship's name, SAN DOMINICK, each letter streakingly corroded with tricklings of copper-spike rust; while, like mourning weeds, dark festoons of sea-grass slimily swept to and fro over the name, with every hearse-like roll of the hull.

To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood!

It is the harpooneer that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how can you expect to find it there when most wanted!

majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank! How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.

Call me Ishmael. I am a schoolmaster, and whenever life got me down, I would leave my job and head for one special place. When my spirits needed restoring, I could always count on the sea.

Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck is now mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion.