Quotes About Melville

Wild rumours abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to.

Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must not for that very reason infallibly be faulty.

loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses

Dost thee?" said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me. "I dost," said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.

and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.

I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology.

But the only thing to be considered here, is this - what kind of oil is used in coronations? Certainly it cannot be Olive Oil, or Maccasar Oil, nor Caster Oil, nor Bear's Oil, nor Train Oil, nor Cod-Liver Oil. What then can it possibly be but Sperm Oil in it's unmanufactured unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?

these Spaniards are all an odd set; the very word Spaniard has a curious, conspirator, Guy-Fawkish twang to it.

We do not know whether Melville's work is of universal interest because we have not reached the end of history yet, despite the best efforts of some of our political leaders.

spring, and break thy backbone! Why don't ye spring, I say, all of ye—spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou

In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling...

In most instances, such seemed the White Whale's infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent.

Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed. Whilst

Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on.

tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me.

equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like.

nothing but that one sufficient little word queer; he's queer, says Stubb; he's queer—queer, queer; and keeps dinning it into Mr. Starbuck all the

To Ishmael, the whale's indefinite whiteness' shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation. [It's] a color-less, all-color of atheism from which we shrink.

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.

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

Holloa! Starbuck's astir, said the rigger. He's a lively chief mate that; good man, and a pious; but

Pott's, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box of sperm candles

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep.