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The Fact Is, That Among His Hunters At Least, The Whale Would By All Hands Be Considered A Noble Dish, Were There Not So Much Of Him; But When You Come To Sit Down Before A Meat-pie Nearly One Hundred Feet Long, It Takes Away Your Appetite.

-Herman Melville

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The Fact Is, That

Herman Melville

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The Fact Is, That Among His Hunters At Least, The Whale Would By All Hands Be Considered A Noble Dish, Were There Not So Much Of Him; But When You Come To Sit Down Before A Meat-pie Nearly One Hundred Feet Long, It Takes Away Your Appetite.

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A Thing May Be Incredible And Still Be True; Sometimes It Is Incredible Because It Is True.

As With Ships, So With Men; He Who Turns His Back To His Foe Gives Him An Advantage.

Zeal Is Not Of Necessity Religion, Neither Is It Always Of The Same Essence With Poetry Or Patriotism.

Let Me Look Into A Human Eye; It Is Better Than To Gaze Into Sea Or Sky; Better Than To Gaze Upon God.

In What Rapt Ether Sails The World, Of Which The Weariest Will Never Weary?

Let Us Speak, Though We Show All Our Faults And Weaknesses, - For It Is A Sign Of Strength To Be Weak, To Know It, And Out With It - Not In A Set Way And Ostentatiously, Though, But Incidentally And Without Premeditation.

When My Eye Rested On An Arid Height, Spirit Partook Of The Barrenness. - Heartily Wish Niebuhr & Strauss To The Dogs. The Deuce Take Their Penetration & Acumen. They Have Robbed Us Of The Bloom.

The Eyes Are The Gateway To The Soul.

Both The Ancestry And Posterity Of Grief Go Further Than The Ancestry And Posterity Of Joy.

I Am Madness Maddened! That Wild Madness That's Only Calm To Comprehend Itself

That Mortal Man Who Hath More Of Joy Than Sorrow In Him, That Mortal Man Cannot Be True--not True, Or Undeveloped.

It Is-or Seems To Be-a Wise Sort Of Thing, To Realise That All That Happens To A Man In This Life Is Only By Way Of Joke, Especially His Misfortunes, If He Have Them. And It Is Also Worth Bearing In Mind, That The Joke Is Passed Round Pretty Liberally & Impartially, So That Not Very Many Are Entitled To Fancy That They In Particular Are Getting The Worst Of It.

Thou Hast Evoked In Me Profounder Spells Than The Evoking One, Thou Face! For Me, Thou Hast Uncovered One Infinite, Dumb, Beseeching Countenance Of Mystery, Underlying All The Surfaces Of Visible Time And Space.

Did All The Lets And Bars Appear To Every Just Or Larger End, Whence Should Come The Trust And Cheer? Youth Must Its Ignorant Impulse Lend-- Age Finds Place In The Rear. All Wars Are Boyish, And Are Fought By Boys, The Champions And Enthusiasts Of The State

The Shadows Of Things Are Greater Than Themselves; And The More Exaggerated The Shadow, The More Unlike The Substance.

It Is Against The Will Of God That The East Should Be Christianized.

We Cannot Live Only For Ourselves. A Thousand Fibers Connect Us With Our Fellow Men.

An Utterly Fearless Man Is A Far More Dangerous Comrade Than A Coward.

If Some Books Are Deemed Most Baneful And Their Sale Forbid, How Then With Deadlier Facts, Not Dreams Of Doting Men? Those Whom Books Will Hurt Will Not Be Proof Against Events. Events, Not Books Should Be Forbid.

We Cannot Live For Ourselves Alone.

Invisible Threads

Serving The Community

The Sea Had Jeeringly Kept His Finite Body Up, But Drowned The Infinite Of His Soul.

Is There Some Principal Of Nature Which States That We Never Know The Quality Of What We Have Until It Is Gone?

Give Not Thyself Up, Then, To Fire, Lest It Invert Thee, Deaden Thee, As For The Time It Did Me. There Is A Wisdom That Is Woe; But There Is A Woe That Is Madness.

Until We Understand That Our Grief Outweighs A Thousand Joys, We Will Never Understand What Christianity Is All About.

Real Strength Never Impairs Beauty Or Harmony, But It Often Bestows It, And In Everything Imposingly Beautiful, Strength Has Much To Do With The Magic.

When Among Wild Beasts, If They Menace You, Be A Wild Beast.

All Mankind, Not Excluding Americans, Are Sinners--miserable Sinners, As Even No Few Bostonians Themselves Nowadays Contritely Respond In The Liturgy.

Immortality Is But Ubiquity In Time.

I Baptize You Not In The Name Of The Father, But In The Name Of The Devil. (ego Baptizo Te In Nomine Patris, Sed In Nomine Diaboli.)

Let America First Praise Mediocrity Even, In Her Children, Before She Praises... The Best Excellence In The Children Of Any Other Land.

The Grand Points In Human Nature Are The Same To-day They Were A Thousand Years Ago. The Only Variability In Them Is In Expression, Not In Feature.

Though Essaying But A Sportive Sail, I Was Driven From My Course By A Blast Re Sistless; And Ill-provided, Young, And Bowed By The Brunt Of Things Before My Prime, Still Fly Before The Gale. ... If After All These Fearful Fainting Trances, The Verdict Be, The Golden Haven Was Not Gained; Yet In Bold Quest Thereof, Better To Sink In Boundless Deeps Than Float On Vulgar Shoals; And Give Me, Ye Gods, An Utter Wreck, If Wreck I Do.

The Friendship Of Fine-hearted, Generous Boys, Nurtured Amid The Romance-engendering Comforts And Elegancies Of Life, Sometimes Transcends The Bounds Of Mere Boyishness, And Revels For A While In The Empyrean Of A Love Which Only Comes Short, By One Degree, Of The Sweetest Sentiment Entertained Between The Sexes.

Our Souls Belong To Our Bodies, Not Our Bodies To Our Souls.

Charity, Like Poetry, Should Be Cultivated, If Only For Its Being Graceful.

What Like A Bullet Can Undeceive!

What We Take To Be Our Strongest Tower Of Delight, Only Stands At The Caprice Of The Minutest Event The Falling Of A Leaf, The Hearing Of A Voice, Or The Receipt Of One Little Bit Of Paper Scratched Over With A Few Small Characters By A Sharpened Feather.

Thrusted Light Is Worse Than Presented Pistols.

Will You, Or Will You Not, Quit Me? I Now Demanded In A Sudden Passion, Advancing Close To Him. "i Would Prefer Not To Quit You", He Replied, Gently Emphasizing The Not.

Thou Saw'st The Locked Lovers When Leaping From Their Flaming Ship; Heart To Heart They Sank Beneath The Exulting Wave; True To Each Other, When Heaven Seemed False To Them.

If There Be Any Thing A Man Might Well Pray Against, That Thing Is The Responsive Gratification Of Some Of The Devoutest Prayers Of His Youth.

Indolence Is Heaven 's Ally Here, And Energy The Child Of Hell : The Good Man Pouring From His Pitcher Clear But Brims The Poisoned Well.

And So, Through All The Thick Mists Of The Dim Doubts In My Mind, Divine Intuitions Now And Then Shoot, Enkindling My Fog With A Heavenly Ray. And For This I Thank God; For All Have Doubts; Many Deny; But Doubts Or Denials, Few Along With Them, Have Intuitions. Doubts Of All Things Earthly, And Intuitions Of Some Things Heavenly; This Combination Makes Neither Believer Nor Infidel, But Makes A Man Who Regards Them Both With Equal Eye.

All Profound Things, And Emotions Of Things Are Preceded And Attended By Silence... Silence Is The General Consecration Of The Universe. Silence Is The Invisible Laying On Of The Divine Pontiff's Hands Upon The World. Silence Is At Once The Most Harmless And The Most Awful Thing In All Nature. It Speaks Of The Reserved Forces Of Fate. Silence Is The Only Voice Of Our God.

Thus It Often Is, That The Constant Friction Of Illiberal Minds Wears Out At Last The Best Resolves Of The More Generous.

Any Appellative At All Savouring Of Arbitrary Rank Is Unsuitable To A Man Of Liberal And Catholic Mind.

Where Does Any Novelist Pick Up Any Character? For The Most Part, In Town, To Be Sure.

To Anybody Who Can Hold The Present At Its Worth Without Being Inappreciative Of The Past, It May Be Forgiven, If To Such An One The Solitary Old Hulk At Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, Seems To Float There, Not Alone As The Decaying Monument Of A Fame Incorruptible, But Also As A Poetic Approach, Softened By Its Picturesqueness, To The Monitors And Yet Mightier Hulls Of The European Ironclads.

Though Amid All The Smoking Horror And Diabolism Of A Sea-fight, Sharks Will Be Seen Longingly Gazing Up To The Ship's Decks, Like Hungry Dogs Round A Table Where Red Meat Is Being Carved, Ready To Bolt Down Every Killed Man That Is Tossed To Them.

The Sailor Is Frankness, The Landsman Is Finesse. Life Is Not A Game With The Sailor, Demanding The Long Head

Civilization Has Not Ever Been The Brother Of Equality. Freedom Was Born Among The Wild Eyries In The Mountains; And Barbarous Tribes Have Sheltered Under Her Wings, When The Enlightened People Of The Plain Have Nestled Under Different Pinions.

It Is Impossible To Talk Or To Write Without Apparently Throwing Oneself Helplessly Open.

Are There No Moravians In The Moon, That Not A Missionary Has Yet Visited This Poor Pagan Planet Of Ours, To Civilise Civilisation And Christianise Christendom?

Stay True To The Dreams Of Thy Youth.

Where Lies The Final Harbor, Whence We Unmoor No More? In What Rapt Ether Sails The World, Of Which The Weariest Will Never Weary? Where Is The Foundling’s Father Hidden? Our Souls Are Like Those Orphans Whose Unwedded Mothers Die In Bearing Them: The Secret Of Our Paternity Lies In Their Grave, And We Must There To Learn It.

Faith And Philosophy Are Air, But Events Are Brass.

Take Almost Any Path You Please, And Ten To One It Carries You Down In A Dale, And Leaves You There By A Pool In The Stream. There Is Magic In It. Let The Most Absent-minded Of Men Be Plunged In His Deepest Reveries--stand That Man On His Legs, Set His Feet A-going, And He Will Infallibly Lead You To Water, If Water There Be In All That Region. Should You Ever Be Athirst In The Great American Desert, Try This Experiment, If Your Caravan Happen To Be Supplied With A Metaphysical Professor. Yes, As Every One Knows, Meditation And Water Are Wedded For Ever.

When The Inhabitants Of Some Sequestered Island First Descry The "big Canoe" Of The European Rolling Through The Blue Waters Towards Their Shores, They Rush Down To The Beach In Crowds, And With Open Arms Stand Ready To Embrace The Strangers. Fatal Embrace! They Fold To Their Bosoms The Vipers Whose Sting Is Destined To Poison All Their Joys; And The Instinctive Feeling Of Love Within Their Breasts Is Soon Converted Into The Bitterest Hate.

It Is Not The Purpose Of Literature To Purvey News. For News Consult The Almanac De Gotha.

To A Sensitive Being, Pity Is Not Seldom Pain.

The Lightning Flashes Through My Skull; Mine Eyeballs Ache And Ache; My Whole Beaten Brain Seems As Beheaded, And Rolling On Some Stunning Ground.

What Is An Atheist, But One Who Does Not, Or Will Not, See In The Universe A Ruling Principle Of Love; And What A Misanthrope, But One Who Does Not, Or Will Not, See In Man A Ruling Principle Of Kindness?

We Are Off! The Courses And Topsails Are Set: The Coral-hung Anchor Swings From The Bow: And Together, The Three Royals Are Given To The Breeze, That Follows Us Out To Sea Like The Baying Of A Hound.

Students Of History Are Horror-struck At The Massacres Of Old; But In The Shambles, Men Are Being Murdered To-day.

The Worst Of Our Evils We Blindly Inflict Upon Ourselves; Our Officers Cannot Remove Them, Even If They Would.

For In Tremendous Extremities Human Souls Are Like Drowning Men; Well Enough They Know They Are In Peril; Well Enough They Know The Causes Of That Peril;--nevertheless, The Sea Is The Sea, And These Drowning Men Do Drown.

Know, Thou, That The Lines That Live Are Turned Out Of A Furrowed Brow.

Surely A Gentle Sister Is The Second Best Gift To A Man; And It Is First In Point Of Occurrence; For The Wife Comes After.

Are Not Half Our Lives Spent In Reproaches For Foregone Actions, Of The True Nature And Consequences Of Which We Were Wholly Ignorant At The Time?

The Pulpit Is Ever This Earth's Foremost Part; All The Rest Comes In Its Rear; The Pulpit Leads The World. From Thence It Is The Storm Of God's Quick Wrath Is First Descried, And The Bow Must Bearthe Earliest Brunt. From Thence It Is The God Of Breezes Fair Or Foul Is First Invokedfor Favorable Winds. Yes, The World's A Ship On Its Passage Out, And Not A Voyage Complete; And The Pulpit Is Its Prow.

And What Is It, Thought I, After All! It’s Only His Outside; A Man Can Be Honest In Any Sort Of Skin.

But When That Smoking Chowder Came In, The Mystery Was Delightfully Explained. Oh! Sweet Friends, Hearken To Me. It Was Made Of Small Juicy Clams, Scarcely Bigger Than Hazel Nuts, Mixed With Pounded Ship Biscuits And Salted Pork Cut Up Into Little Flakes! The Whole Enriched With Butter, And Plentifully Seasoned With Pepper And Salt... We Dispatched It With Great Expedition.

But Oh! Shipmates! On The Starboard Hand Of Every Woe, There Is A Sure Delight; And Higher The Top Of That Delight, Than The Bottom Of The Woe Is Deep.

Consider The Subtleness Of The Sea; How Its Most Dreaded Creatures Glide Under Water, Unapparent For The Most Part, And Treacherously Hidden Beneath The Loveliest Tints Of Azure..... Consider All This; And Then Turn To This Green, Gentle , And Most Docile Earth; Consider Them Both, The Sea And The Land; And Do You Not Find A Strange Analogy To Something In Yourself?

Contempt Is As Frequently Produced At First Sight As Love.

A Gentleman Of Typee Can Bring Up A Numerous Family Of Children And Give Them All A Highly Respectable Cannibal Education, With Infinitely Less Toil And Anxiety Than He Expends In The Simple Process Of Striking A Light; Whilst A Poor European Artisan, Who Through The Instrumentality Of A Lucifer Performs The Same Operation In One Second, Is Put To His Wits' End To Provide For His Starving Offspring That Food Which The Children Of A Polynesian Father, Without Troubling Their Parent, Pluck From The Branches Of Every Tree Around Them.

Youth Is The Time When Hearts Are Large, And Stirring Wars Appeal To The Spirit Which Appeals In Turn To The Blade It Draws.

There Is A Woe That Is Wisdom, A Woe That Is Madness.

There Is The Grand Truth About Nathaniel Hawthorne. He Says No! In Thunder; But The Devil Himself Cannot Make Him Say Yes. For All Men Who Say Yes, Lie; And All Men Who Say No,why, They Are In The Happy Condition Of Judicious, Unincumbered Travellers In Europe; They Cross The Frontiers Into Eternity With Nothing But A Carpet-bag,that Is To Say, The Ego. Whereas Those Yes-gentry, They Travel With Heaps Of Baggage, And, Damn Them! They Will Never Get Through The Custom House.

The Sweetest Joys Of Life Grow In The Very Jaws Of Its Perils.

There Is Something Wrong About The Man Who Wants Help. There Is Somewhere A Deep Defect, A Want, In Brief, A Need, A Crying Need, Somewhere About That Man.

But When A Man Suspects Any Wrong It Sometimes Happens That If He Be Already Involved In The Matter He Insensibly Strives To Cover Up His Suspicions Even From Himself. And Much This Way It Was With Me. I Said Nothing And Tried To Think Nothing.

It Is Upon Record, That Three Centuries Ago The Tongue Of The Right Whale Was Esteemed A Great Delicacy In France, And Commanded Large Prices There.

I Know Not All That May Be Coming, But Be It What It Will, I'll Go To It Laughing.

That Great America On The Other Side Of The Sphere, Australia.

Better Be Secure Under One King, Than Exposed To Violence From Twenty Millions Of Monarchs, Though Oneself Be One Of Them.

A Ship Is A Bit Of Terra Firma Cut Off From The Main; It Is A State In Itself; And The Captain Is Its King.

Ladies Are Like Creeds; If You Cannot Speak Well Of Them, Say Nothing.

The Path To My Fixed Purpose Is Laid With Iron Rails Whereon My Soul Is Grooved To Run

Fame Is An Accident; Merit A Thing Absolute.

Towards Thee I Roll, Thou All-destroying But Unconquering Whale... From Hell's Heart I Stab At Thee.

The Dinner-hour Is The Summer Of The Day: Full Of Sunshine, I Grant; But Not Like The Mellow Autumn Of Supper.

Start Her, Now; Give 'em The Long And Strong Stroke, Tashtego. Start Her, Tash, My Boy-start Her, All; But Keep Cool, Keep Cool-cucumbers Is The Word-easy, Easy-only Start Her Like Grim Death And Grinning Devils, And Raise The Buried Dead Perpendicular Out Of Their Graves, Boys-that's All. Start Her!

I Rejoice In My Spine, As In The Firm Audacious Staff Of That Flag Which I Fling Half Out To The World.

I Am Past Scorching; Not Easily Can’st Thou Scorch A Scar.

See With What Entire Freedom The Whaleman Takes His Handful Of Lamps-often But Old Bottles And Vials, Though. ... He Burns, Too, The Purest Of Oil. ... It Is Sweet As Early Grass Butter In April. He Goes And Hunts For His Oil, So As To Be Sure Of Its Freshness And Genuineness, Even As The Traveler On The Prairie Hunts Up His Own Supper Of Game.

In Some Things, We Americans Leave To Other Countries The Carrying Out Of The Principle That Stands At The Head Of Our Declaration Of Independence.

We Incline To Think That God Cannot Explain His Own Secrets And That He Would Like A Little Information Upon Certain Points Himself. We Mortals Astonish Him As Much As He Us. But It Is This Being Of The Matter; There Lies The Knot With Which We Choke Ourselves. As Soon As You Say Me, A God, A Nature, So Soon You Jump Off From Your Stool And Hang From The Beam. Yes, That Word Is The Hangman. Take God Out Of The Dictionary, And You Would Have Him In The Street.

And The Visible World Seems Formed In Love, The Invisible Spheres Were Formed In Fright.

In Placid Hours Well-pleased We Dream Of Many A Brave Unbodied Scheme. But Form To Lend, Pulsed Life Create, What Unlike Things Must Meet And Mate: A Flame To Melt--a Wind To Freeze; Sad Patience--joyous Energies; Humility--yet Pride And Scorn; Instinct And Study; Love And Hate; Audacity--reverence. These Must Mate, And Fuse With Jacob's Mystic Heart, To Wrestle With The Angel--art.

Truth Is In Things, And Not In Words.

Failure Is The Test Of Greatness.

When I Think Of This Life I Have Led; The Desolation Of Solitude It Has Been; The Masoned, Walled-town Of A Captain's Exclusiveness, Which Admits But Small Entrance To Any Sympathy From The Green Country Without - Oh, Weariness! Heaviness! Guinea-coast Slavery Of Solitary Command!

War Should Be Carried On Like A Monsoon; One Changeless Determination Of Every Particle Towards The One Unalterable Aim.

In One Word, Queequeg, Said I, Rather Digressively; Hell Is An Idea First Born On An Undigested Apple-dumpling; And Since Then Perpetuated Through The Hereditary Dyspepsias Nurtured By Ramadans.

Leviathan Is Not The Biggest Fish; — I Have Heard Of Krakens.

It Does Seem To Me, That Herein We See The Rare Virtue Of A Strong Individual Vitality, And The Rare Virtue Of Thick Walls, And The Rare Virtue Of Interior Spaciousness. Oh, Man! Admire And Model Thyself After The Whale! Do Thou, Too, Remain Warm Among Ice. Do Thou, Too, Live In This World Without Being Of It. Be Cool At The Equator; Keep Thy Blood Fluid At The Pole. Like The Great Dome Of St. Peter's, And Like The Great Whale, Retain, O Man! In All Seasons A Temperature Of Thine Own.

As In Digging For Precious Metals In The Mines, Much Earthy Rubbish Has First To Be Troublesomely Handled And Thrown Out; So, In Digging In One's Soul For The Fine Gold Of Genius, Much Dullness And Common-place Is First Brought To Light.

When The Passage "all Men Are Born Free And Equal," When That Passage Was Being Written Were Not Some Of The Signers Legalised Owners Of Slaves?

Death Is Only A Launching Into The Region Of The Strange Untried; It Is But The First Salutation To The Possibilities Of The Immense Remote, The Wild, The Watery, The Unshored.

Queequeg Was A Native Of Kokovoko, An Island Far Away To The West And South. It Is Not Down In Any Map; True Places Never Are.

Not One Man In Five Cycles, Who Is Wise, Will Expect Appreciative Recognition From His Fellows, Or Any One Of Them.

He Who Has Never Failed Somewhere, That Man Can Not Be Great. Failure Is The True Test Of Greatness. And If It Be Said, That Continual Success Is A Proof That A Man Wisely Knows His Powers,--it Is Only To Be Added, That, In That Case, He Knows Them To Be Small.

The Profound Calm Which Only Apparently Precedes And Prophesies Of The Storm, Is Perhaps More Awful Than The Storm Itself; For Indeed, The Calm Is But The Wrapper And Envelop Of The Storm, And Contains It In Itself, As The Seemingly Harmless Rifle Holds The Fatal Powder, And The Ball, And The Explosion.

Nothing Can Lift The Heart Of Man Like Manhood In A Fellow Man.

Much Of A Man's Character Will Be Found Betokened In His Backbone. I Would Rather Feel Your Spine Than Your Skull, Whoever You Are. A Thin Joist Of A Spine Never Yet Upheld A Full And Noble Soul.

Nothing May Help Or Heal While Amor Incensed Remembers Wrong.

There Are Hardly Five Critics In America; And Several Of Them Are Asleep.

Of All Nature's Animated Kingdoms, Fish Are The Most Unchristian, Inhospitable, Heartless, And Cold-blooded Of Creatures.

The Navy Is The Asylum For The Perverse, The Home Of The Unfortunate. Here The Sons Of Adversity Meet The Children Of Calamity, And Here The Children Of Calamity Meet The Offspring Of Sin.

I Love To Sail Forbidden Seas, And Land On Barbarous Coasts.

The Symmetry Of Form Attainable In Pure Fiction Can Not So Readily Be Achieved In A Narration Essentially Having Less To Do With Fable Than With Fact. Truth Uncompromisingly Told Will Always Have Its Ragged Edges.

Better Be An Old Maid, A Woman With Herself As A Husband, Than The Wife Of A Fool; And Solomon More Than Hints That All Men Are Fools; And Every Wise Man Knows Himself To Be One.

The Result Of Civilization, At The Sandwich Islands And Elsewhere, Is Found Productive To The Civilizers, Destructive To The Civilizees. It Is Said To Be Compensation--a Very Philosophical Word; But It Appears To Be Very Much On The Principle Of The Old Game, "you Lose, I Win": Good Philosophy For The Winner.

Bachelors Alone Can Travel Freely, And Without Any Twinges Of Their Consciences Touching Desertion Of The Fire-side.

Never Joke At Funerals, Or During Business Transactions.

Appalling Is The Soul Of A Man! Better Might One Be Pushed Off Into The Material Spaces Beyond The Uttermost Orbit Of Our Sun, Than Once Feel Himself Fairly Afloat In Himself.

Strange As It May Seem, There Is Nothing In Which A Young And Beautiful Female Appears To More Advantage Than In The Art Of Smoking.

Think Not, Is My Eleventh Commandment; And Sleep When You Can, Is My Twelfth.

Where Is There Such An One Who Has Not A Thousand Times Been Struck With A Sort Of Infidel Idea, That Whatever Other Worlds God May Be Lord Of, He Is Not The Lord Of This; For Else This World Would Seem To Give The Lie To Him; So Utterly Repugnant Seem Its Ways To The Instinctively Known Ways Of Heaven.

Where Do Murderers Go, Man! Who's To Doom, When The Judge Himself Is Dragged To The Bar?

Let Us Only Hate Hatred; And Once Give Love A Play, We Will Fall In Love With A Unicorn.

Implacable I, The Implacable Sea; Implacable Most When Most I Smile Serene- Pleased, Not Appeased, By Myriad Wrecks In Me.

Whatever Has Made, Or Does Make, Or May Make Music, Should Be Held Sacred As The Golden Bridle-bit Of The Shah Of Persia's Horse,and The Golden Hammer, With Which His Hoofs Are Shod.

Failure Is The True Test Of Greatness

No Mercy, No Power But Its Own Controls It. Panting And Snorting Like A Mad Battle Steed That Has Lost Its Rider, The Masterless Ocean Overruns The Globe.

The Phantom-host Has Faded Quite, Splendor And Terror Gone-- Portent Or Promise--and Gives Way To Pale, Meek Dawn.

I Have Written A Wicked Book, And Feel Spotless As The Lamb. Ineffable Socialities Are In Me. I Would Sit Down And Dine With You And All The Gods In Old Rome's Pantheon. It Is A Strange Feeling--no Hopefulness Is In It, No Despair. Content--that Is It; And Irresponsibility; But Without Licentious Inclination.

The Great God Absolute! The Centre And Circumference Of All Democracy! His Omnipresence, Our Divine Equality!

Poor People Make A Very Poor Business Of It When They Try To Seem Rich.

Courage Is The Most Common And Vulgar Of The Virtues.

The Man's (a Heathen South Sea Islander) A Human Being, Just As I Am; He Has Just As Much Reason To Fear Me, As I Have To Be Afraid Of Him. Better Sleep With A Sober Cannibal Than A Drunken Christian.

How It Is I Know Not; But There Is No Place Like A Bed For Confidential Disclosures Between Friends. Man And Wife, They Say, There Open The Very Bottom Of Their Souls To Each Other; And Some Old Couples Often Lie And Chat Over Old Times Till Nearly Morning. Thus, Then, In Our Hearts' Honeymoon, Lay I And Queequeg - A Cosy, Loving Pair.

Stripped Of The Cunning Artifices Of The Tailor, And Standing Forth In The Garb Of Eden - What A Sorry Set Of Round-shouldered, Spindle-shanked, Crane-necked Varlets Would Civilized Men Appear!

In Thoughts Of The Visions Of The Night, I Saw Long Rows Of Angels In Paradise, Each With His Hands In A Jar Of Spermaceti.

One Would Like To Know, What Were Foes Made For Except To Be Used?

Silence Is The Only Voice Of Our God.

But Captain Vere Was Now Again Motionless, Standing Absorbed In Thought. Again Starting, He Vehemently Exclaimed, "struck Dead By An Angel Of God! Yet That Angel Must Hang!

This Divineness Had That In It Which, Though Commanding Worship, At The Same Time Enforced A Certain Nameless Terror.

Tis No Dishonor When He Who Would Dishonor You, Only Dishonors Himself.

He Who Has Never Failed Somewhere, That Man Can Not Be Great.

Ah! The Best Righteousness Of Our Man-of-war World Seems But An Unrealized Ideal, After All; And Those Maxims Which, In The Hope Of Bringing About A Millennium, We Busily Teach To The Heathen, We Christians Ourselves Disregard.

Youth Is The Time When Hearts Are Large.

Say What Some Poets Will, Nature Is Not So Much Her Own Ever-sweet Interpreter, As The Mere Supplier Of That Cunning Alphabet, Whereby Selecting And Combining As He Pleases, Each Man Reads His Own Peculiar Lesson According To His Own Peculiar Mind And Mood.

A Good Laugh Is A Mighty Good Thing, And Rather Too Scarce A Good Thing; The More's The Pity. So, If Any One Man, In His Own Proper Person, Afford Stuff For A Good Joke To Anybody, Let Him Not Be Backward, But Let Him Cheerfully Allow Himself To Spend And Be Spent In That Way. And The Man That Has Anything Bountifully Laughable About Him, Be Sure There Is More In That Man Than You Perhaps Think For.

The American, Who Up To The Present Day, Has Evinced, In Literature, The Largest Brain With The Largest Heart, That Man Is Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Climate Of Egypt In Winter Is The Reign Of Spring Upon Earth, & Summer In The Air, And Tranquility In The Heat.

There Are Some Persons In This World, Who, Unable To Give Better Proof Of Being Wise, Take A Strange Delight In Showing What They Think They Have Sagaciously Read In Mankind By Uncharitable Suspicions Of Them.

I Have No Objection To Any Person's Religion, Be It What It May, So Long As That Person Does Not Kill Or Insult Any Other Person, Because That Other Person Don't Believe It Also. But When A Man's Religion Becomes Really Frantic; When It Is A Positive Torment To Him; And, In Fine, Makes This Earth Of Ours An Uncomfortable Inn To Lodge In; Then I Think It High Time To Take That Individual Aside And Argue The Point With Him.

Nature Has Not Implanted Any Power In Man That Was Not Meant To Be Exercised At Times, Though Too Often Our Powers Have Been Abused. The Privilege, Inborn And Inalienable, That Every Man Has Of Dying Himself, And Inflicting Death Upon Another, Was Not Given To Us Without A Purpose. These Are The Last Resources Of An Insulted And Unendurable Existence.

You Cannot Spill A Drop Of American Blood Without Spilling The Blood Of The Whole World.... We Are Not A Nation, So Much As A World.

There Seems No Reason Why Patriotism And Narrowness Should Go Together, Or Why Intellectual Impartiality Should Be Confounded With Political Trimming, Or Why Serviceable Truth Should Keep Cloistered Be A Cause Not Partisan.

It Is The Horrible Texture Of A Fabric That Should Be Woven Of Ships' Cables And Hawsers. A Polar Wind Blows Through It, And Birds Of Prey Hover Over It.

Were This World An Endless Pain, And By Sailing Eastward We Could Forever 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.

It Is With Fiction As With Religion: It Should Present Another World, And Yet One To Which We Feel The Tie.

The World Is Forever Babbling Of Originality; But There Never Yet Was An Original Man, In The Sense Intended By The World; The First Man Himself--who According To The Rabbins Was Also The First Author--not Being An Original; The Only Original Author Being God.

There Are Times When Even The Most Potent Governor Must Wink At Transgression, In Order To Preserve The Laws Inviolate For The Future.

Beware The People Weeping When They Bare The Iron Hand.

A Man Can Be Honest In Any Sort Of Skin.

In Glades They Meet Skull After Skull Where Pine Cones Lay-the Rusted Gun, Green Shoes Full Of Bones, The Mouldering Coat And Cuddled Up Skeleton; And Scores Of Such. Some Start As In Dreams, And Comrades Lost Bemoan; By The Edge Of Those Wilds Stonewall Had Charged- But The Year And The Man Were Gone.

The Starred And Stately Nights Seemed Haughty Dames In Jewelled Velvets, Nursing At Home In Lonely Pride, The Memory Of Their Absent Conquering Earls, The Golden Helmeted Suns!

To Produce A Mighty Book, You Must Choose A Mighty Theme.

A Whale Ship Was My Yale College And My Harvard.

Why Did The Old Persians Hold The Sea Holy? Why Did The Greeks Give It A Separate Deity, And Own Brother Jove? Surely All This Is Not Without Meaning. And Still Deeper The Meaning Of That Story Of Narcissus, Who Because He Could Not Grasp The Tormenting Mild Image He Saw In The Fountain, Plunged Into It And Was Drowned. But That Same Image, We Ourselves See In All Rivers And Oceans. It Is The Image Of The Ungraspable Phantom Of Life; And This Is The Key To It All.

Nearly All Literature, In One Sense, Is Made Up Of Guide-books. Old Ones Tell Us The Ways Our Fathers Went, Through The Thoroughfares And Courts Of Old; But How Few Of Those Former Places Can Their Posterity Trace, Amid Avenues Of Modern Erections; To How Few Is The Old Guide-book Now A Clew! Every Age Makes Its Own Guide-books, And The Old Ones Are Used For Waste Paper.

That Author Who Draws A Character, Even Though To Common View Incongruous In Its Parts, As The Flying-squirrel, And, At Differentperiods, As Much At Variance With Itself As The Caterpillar Is With The Butterfly Into Which It Changes, May Yet, In So Doing, Be Not False But Faithful To Facts.

Woe To Him Who Seeks To Please Rather Than Appall.

Toil Is Man's Allotment; Toil Of Brain, Or Toil Of Hands, Or A Grief That's More Than Either, The Grief And Sin Of Idleness.

There Is One Knows Not What Sweet Mystery About This Sea, Whose Gently Awful Stirrings Seem To Speak Of Some Hidden Soul Beneath.

Talk Not To Me Of Blasphemy, Man; I'd Strike The Sun If It Insulted Me.

There's Magic In The Water That Draws All Men Away Form The Land, That Leads Them Over Hills, Down Creeks And Streams And Rivers To The Sea.

He Knows Himself, And All That's In Him, Who Knows Adversity.

Woe To Him Whom This World Charms From Gospel Duty. Woe To Him Who Seeks To Pour Oil Upon The Waters When God Has Brewed Them Into A Gale. Woe To Him Who Seeks To Please Rather Than To Appal. Woe To Him Whose Good Name Is More To Him Than Goodness. Woe To Him Who, In This World, Courts Not Dishonor! Woe To Him Who Would Not Be True, Even Though To Be False Were Salvation. Yea, Woe To Him Who, As The Great Pilot Paul Has It, While Preaching To Others Is Himself A Castaway.

If You Can Get Nothing Better Out Of The World, Get A Good Dinner Out Of It, At Least.

Let Us Pray That The Great Historic Tragedy Of Our Time May Not Have Been Enacted Without Instructing Our Whole Beloved Country Through Terror And Pity; And May Fulfillment Verify In The End Those Expectations Which Kindle The Bards Of Progress And Humanity.

For All His Tattooings He Was On The Whole A Clean, Comely Looking Cannibal.

Man And Boy, I Have Lived Ever Since I Can Remember.

All Wars Are Boyish, And Are Fought By Boys, The Champions And Enthusiasts Of The State: Turbid Ardors And Vain Joys Not Barrenly Abate-- Stimulants To The Power Mature, Preparatives Of Fate.

Who In The Rainbow Can Draw The Line Where The Violet Tint Ends And The Orange Tint Begins? Distinctly We See The Difference Of The Colors, But Where Exactly Does The One First Blendingly Enter Into The Other? So With Sanity And Insanity.

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, Humanity!

One Of The Coolest And Wisest Hours A Man Has, Is Just After He Awakes In The Morning.

There Is Something In Us, Somehow, That, In The Most Degraded Condition, We Snatch At A Chance To Deceive Ourselves Into A Fanciedsuperiority To Others, Whom We Suppose Lower In The Scale Than Ourselves.

Whatever My Fate, I'll Go To It Laughing.

A Noble Craft, But Somehow A Most Melancholy! All Noble Things Are Touched With That.

Yea, Foolish Mortals, Noah's Flood Is Not Yet Subsided; Two Thirds Of The Fair World It Yet Covers.

There Is All Of The Difference In The World Between Paying And Being Paid.

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.

Traveling Takes The Ink Out Of One's Pen As Well As The Cash Out Of One's Purse.

Heaven Have Mercy On Us All - Presbyterians And Pagans Alike - For We Are All Somehow Dreadfully Cracked About The Head, And Sadly Need Mending.

All Round And Round Does The World Lie As In A Sharp-shooter's Ambush, To Pick Off The Beautiful Illusions Of Youth, By The Pitiless Cracking Rifles Of The Realities Of Age.

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Elizabeth Montagu

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