Quotes About Mystery

There she blows!—there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!

Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep. I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none?

For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like.

all was eclipsed in sinister muteness

For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!

Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic sign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere those things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.

And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue.

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them.

The great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last.

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face.

remains a part of the universal problem of all things.

I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.

Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

It's not down in any map; true places never are.

So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. 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.

Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence.

Herman Melville

below calls ditto. I'll get the almanac and as I have heard devils can

Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down on any map; true places never are.

where at times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain

Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went?

Considerad la sutileza del mar; cómo sus más temidas criaturas se deslizan bajo el agua, sin aparecer en su mayor parte, traidoramente ocultas bajo lo más amables matices del azur.