Quotes About Danger

And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.

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.

If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die.

So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible dangers from encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least water rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil.

A mantrap may be under his ruddy-tipped daisies.

Be careful in the hunt, ye mates.

No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some of them actually burst their blood-vessels in the boat;

No wonder there had been some among the hunters who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of tornadoes.

No quiero a ningún hombre en mi barco que no tenga miedo de la ballena», decía Starbuck. Con esto parecía insinuar no sólo que el valor más seguro y más útil es el que surge de una justa estimación del peligro que se afronta, sino también que un hombre que ignora el miedo es compañero mucho más riesgoso que un cobarde. —Sí

el que no conoce el miedo resulta mucho más peligroso que un cobarde para sus compañeros.

The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing the spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads. (p. 11.)

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?

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

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.

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

It is very difficult to console a person without seeming very fond of them; and then there's the danger of them growing fond of you.

You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.

The man does better who runs from disaster than he who is caught by it.

Iron has powers to draw a man to ruin

sea-wolves raiding at will, who risk their lives to plunder other men?

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. . . . The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

the enemy is whoever wants to get you killed, whichever side they're on.