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Quotes About Contrast

Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories. Now
~ Herman Melville
I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.
~ Herman Melville
The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
~ Herman Melville
Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm.
~ Herman Melville
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.
~ Herman Melville
for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
~ Herman Melville
might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage's sword
~ Herman Melville
Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee!
~ Herman Melville
a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama.
~ Herman Melville
Yonder, to windward, all is blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward—I see it lightens up there; but not with the lightning.
~ Herman Melville
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
~ Herman Melville
Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold—I shiver!—How now? Aloft there! D'ye see him? Sing out for every spout, though he spout ten times a second!
~ Herman Melville
All the world over, the picturesque yields to the pocketesque.
~ Herman Melville
We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
~ Herman Melville
because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
~ Herman Melville
Porque ningún hombre puede sentir bien su propia identidad si no es con los ojos cerrados; como si la tiniebla fuera efectivamente el elemento adecuado de nuestras esencias, aunque la luz sea mas afín a nuestra parte arcillosa.
~ Herman Melville
Yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.
~ Herman Melville
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?
~ Herman Melville
Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?
~ Herman Melville
The sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious, for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider.
~ Herman Melville
If he had not been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on.
~ Herman Melville
La felicidad busca la luz, por eso nos parece que el mundo es alegre; pero el sufrimiento se esconde, por eso nos parece que no existe.
~ Herman Melville
orice lucru bun pe lume e aÈ™a fiindc? se afl? în contrast cu altceva. Nimic nu poate fi judecat dac? e comparat doar cu el însuÈ™i.
~ Herman Melville
Mutluluk ???kla cilveleÅŸir, biz de dünyan?n neÅŸe dolu olduÄŸunu düÅŸünürüz. Oysa ?zd?rap uzaklarda saklan?r, bizde ?zd?rap yok san?r?z.
~ Herman Melville