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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.

-Herman Melville

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Though Amid All The

Herman Melville

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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.

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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.

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.

For God's Sake, Be Economical With Your Lamps And Candles! Not A Gallon You Burn, But At Least One Drop Of Man's Blood Was Spilled For It.

There Is A Touch Of Divinity Even In Brutes, And A Special Halo About A Horse, That Should Forever Exempt Him From Indignities.

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

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

Dream Tonight Of Peacock Tails, Diamond Fields And Spouter Whales. Ills Are Many, Blessing Few, But Dreams Tonight Will Shelter You.

Is He Mad? Anyway There's Something On His Mind, As Sure As There Must Be Something On A Deck When It Cracks.

Fame Is An Accident; Merit A Thing Absolute.

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

The Sailor Is Frankness, The Landsman Is Finesse. Life Is Not A Game With The Sailor, Demanding The Long Head--no Intricate Game Of Chess Where Few Moves Are Made In Straight-forwardness And Ends Are Attained By Indirection, An Oblique, Tedious, Barren Game Hardly Worth That Poor Candle Burnt Out In Playing It.

The Entire Merit Of A Man Can Never Be Made Known; Nor The Sum Of His Demerits, If He Have Them. We Are Only Known By Our Names; As Letters Sealed Up, We But Read Each Other's Superscriptions.

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.

No Philosophers So Thoroughly Comprehend Us As Dogs And Horses.

I Do Not Think I Have Any Uncharitable Prejudice Against The Rattlesnake, Still, I Should Not Like To Be One.

What Troops Of Generous Boys In Happiness Thus Bred Saturnians Through Life's Tempe Led, Went From The North And Came From The South, With Golden Mottoes In The Mouth, To Lie Down Midway On A Bloody Bed.

The Only True Infidelity Is For A Live Man To Vote Himself Dead.

We Are Only What We Are; Not What We Would Be; Nor Every Thing We Hope For. We Are But A Step In A Scale, That Reaches Further Above Us Than Below.

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

Nothing May Help Or Heal While Amor Incensed Remembers Wrong.

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

Meditation And Water Are Wedded For Ever.

We Should, If Possible, Prove A Teacher To Posterity, Instead Of Being The Pupil Of By-gone Generations. More Shall Come After Us Than Have Gone Before; The World Is Not Yet Middle-aged.

The Most Mighty Of Nature's Laws Is This, That Out Of Death She Brings Life.

To Be Called One Thing, Is Oftentimes To Be Another.

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

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

For Small Erections May Be Finished By Their First Architects; Grand Ones, True Ones, Ever Leave The Copestone To Posterity. God Keep Me From Ever Completing Anything. This Whole Book Is But A Draught—nay, But The Draught Of A Draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, And Patience!

There Is No Life In Thee, Now, Except That Rocking Life Imparted By A Gently Rolling Ship; By Her, Borrowed From The Sea; By The Sea, From The Inscrutable Tides Of God.

We Cannibals Must Help These Christians.

The Past Is The Textbook Of Tyrants; The Future The Bible Of The Free. Those Who Are Solely Governed By The Past Stand Like Lot's Wife, Crystallized In The Act Of Looking Backward, And Forever Incapable Of Looking Before.

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 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.

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.

There Is No Champollion To Decipher The Egypt Of Every Man's And Every Being's Face. Physiognomy, Like Every Other Human Science,is But A Passing Fable.

If Not Against Us, Nature Is Not For Us.

A Hermitage In The Forest Is The Refuge Of The Narrow-minded Misanthrope; A Hammock On The Ocean Is The Asylum For The Generous Distressed.

We Talk Of The Turks, And Abhor The Cannibals; But May Not Some Of Them, Go To Heaven, Before Some Of Us?

Cannibals? Who Is Not A Cannibal? I Tell You It Will Be More Tolerable For The Fejee That Salted Down A Lean Missionary In His Cellar Against A Coming Famine; It Will Be More Tolerable For That Provident Fejee, I Say, In The Day Of Judgement, Than For Thee, Civilized And Enlightened Gourmand, Who Nailest Geese To The Ground And Feastest On Their Bloated Livers In Thy Pate De Fois Gras.

Thou Wine Art The Friend Of The Friendless, Though A Foe To All.

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.

Passion, And Passion In Its Profoundest, Is Not A Thing Demanding A Palatial Stage Whereon To Play Its Part. Down Among The Groundlings, Among The Beggars And Rakers Of The Garbage, Profound Passion Is Enacted. And The Circumstances That Provoke It, However Trivial Or Mean, Are No Measure Of Its Power. In The Present Instance The Stage Is A Scrubbed Gun Deck, And One Of The External Provocations A Man-of-war's-man's Spilled Soup.

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

O Nature, And O Soul Of Man! How Far Beyond All Utterance Are Your Linked Analogies; Not The Smallest Atom Stirs Or Lives On Matter, But Has Its Cunning Duplicate In Mind.

The Further Our Civilization Advances Upon Its Present Lines So Much The Cheaper Sort Of Thing Does "fame" Become, Especially Of The Literary Sort. This Species Of "fame" A Waggish Acquaintance Says Can Be Manufactured To Order, And Sometimes Is So Manufactured.

All Deep, Earnest Thinking Is But The Intrepid Effort Of The Soul To Keep The Open Independence Of Her Sea, While The Wildest Winds Of Heaven And Earth Conspire To Cast Her On The Treacherous, Slavish Shore.

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

Nothing So Aggravates An Earnest Person As A Passive Resistance.

Passive Resistance

In This World, Shipmates, Sin That Pays Its Way Can Travel Freely, And Without Passport; Whereas Virtue, If A Pauper, Is Stopped At All Frontiers.

All We Discover Has Been With Us Since The Sun Began To Roll; And Much We Discover, Is Not Worth The Discovering.

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.

Erie, And Ontario, And Huron, And Superior, And Michigan Possess An Ocean-like Expansiveness, With Many Of The Ocean's Noblest Traits... They Are Swept By Borean And Dismasting Blasts As Direful As Any That Lash The Salted Wave; They Know What Shipwrecks Are, For Out Of Sight Of Land, However Inland, They Have Drowned Full Many A Midnight Ship With All Its Shrieking Crew.

My Means Are Sane, My Motives And My Object Mad.

The Man That Has Anything Bountifully Laughable About Him, Be Sure There Is More In That Man Than You Perhaps Think For.

God Help Thee, Old Man, Thy Thoughts Have Created A Creature In Thee; And He Whose Intense Thinking Thus Makes Him A Prometheus; A Vulture Feeds Upon That Heart For Ever; That Vulture The Very Creature He Creates.

Twelve O'clock! It Is The Natural Centre, Key-stone, And Very Heart Of The Day. At That Hour, The Sun Has Arrived At The Top Of His Hill; And As He Seems To Hang Poised There A While, Before Coming Down On The Other Side, It Is But Reasonable To Suppose That He Is Then Stopping To Dine; Setting An Eminent Example To All Mankind.

The Late John Jacob Astor, A Personage Little Given To Poetic Enthusiasm, Had No Hesitation In Pronouncing My First Grand Point To Be Prudence; My Next, Method. I Do Not Speak It In Vanity, But Simply Record The Fact, That I Was Not Unemployed In My Profession By The Late John Jacob Astor; A Name Which, I Admit, I Love To Repeat, For It Hath A Rounded And Orbicular Sound To It, And Rings Like Unto Bullion. I Will Freely Add, That I Was Not Insensible To The Late John Jacob Astor's Good Opinion.

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.

I Am Sorry To Say We Whites Have A Sad Reputation Among Many Of The Polynesians. The Natives Of These Islands Are Naturally Of A Kindly And Hospitable Temper, But There Has Been Implanted Among Them An Almost Instinctive Hate Of The White Man. They Esteem Us, With Rare Exceptions, Such As Some Of The Missionaries, The Most Barbarous, Treacherous, Irreligious, And Devilish Creatures On The Earth.

The Terrors Of Truth And Dart Of Death To Faith Alike Are Vain.

When We Affect To Condemn Savages, We Should Remember That By Doing So We Asperse Our Own Progenitors; For They Were Savages Also.who Can Swear That Among The Naked British Barbarians Sent To Rome To Be Stared At More Than 1500 Years Ago, The Ancestor Of Bacon Might Not Have Been Found?--why, Among The Very Thugs Of India, Or The Bloody Dyaks Of Borneo, Exists The Germ Of All That Is Intellectually Elevated And Grand. We Are All Of Us--anglo-saxons, Dyaks And Indians--sprung From One Head And Made In One Image.

From Without, No Wonderful Effect Is Wrought Within Ourselves, Unless Some Interior, Responding Wonder Meets It. That The Starry Vault Shall Surcharge The Heart With All Rapturous Marvelings, Is Only Because We Ourselves Are Greater Miracles, And Superber Trophies Than All The Stars In Universal Space.

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.

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

The Western Spirit Is, Or Will Yet Be (for No Other Is, Or Can Be) The True American One.

Youth Is Immortal; Tis The Elderly Only Grow Old!

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

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.

I Would Prefer Not To.

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.

Courage Is The Most Common And Vulgar Of The Virtues.

In Metropolitan Cases, The Love Of The Most Single-eyed Lover, Almost Invariably, Is Nothing More Than The Ultimate Settling Of Innumerable Wandering Glances Upon Some One Specific Object.

I Could...see In Emerson...that Had He Lived In Those Days When The World Was Made, He Might Have Offered Some Valuable Suggestions.

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.

There Are Doubts, Sir, Which, If Man Have Them, It Is Not Man That Can Solve Them.

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?

Nobody Is So Heartily Despised As A Pusillanimous, Lazy, Good-for-nothing, Land-lubber; A Sailor Has No Bowels Of Compassion For Him.

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.

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

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

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

When Beholding The Tranquil Beauty And Brilliancy Of The Ocean’s Skin, One Forgets The Tiger Heart That Pants Beneath It; And Would Not Willingly Remember That This Velvet Paw But Conceals A Remorseless Fang.

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

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.

A Beautiful Woman Is Born Queen Of Men And Women Both, As Mary Stuart Was Born Queen Of Scots, Whether Men Or Women.

Those Peculiar Social Sensibilities Nourished By Our Own Peculiar Political Principles, While They Enhance The True Dignity Of A Prosperous American, Do But Minister To The Added Wretchedness Of The Unfortunate; First, By Prohibiting Their Acceptance Of What Little Random Relief Charity May Offer; And, Second, By Furnishing Them With The Keenest Appreciation Of The Smarting Distinction Between Their Ideal Of Universal Equality And Their Grind-stone Experience Of The Practical Misery And Infamy Of Poverty.

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 Armies, Navies, Cities, Or Families, In Nature Herself, Nothing More Relaxes Good Order Than Misery.

The Easiest Way Of Life Is The Best.

It Is Hard To Be Finite Upon An Infinite Subject, And All Subjects Are Infinite.

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.

It Is Plain And Demonstrable, That Much Ale Is Not Good For Yankee, And Operates Differently Upon Them From What It Does Upon A Briton; Ale Must Be Drank In A Fog And A Drizzle.

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.

There Are Two Places In The World Where Men Can Most Effectively Disappear - The City Of London And The South Seas.

In A Multitude Of Acquaintances Is Less Security, Than In One Faithful Friend.

He Seemed To Take To Me Quite As Naturally And Unbiddenly As I To Him; And When Our Smoke Was Over, He Pressed His Forehead Against Mine, Clasped Me Round The Waist, And Said That Henceforth We Were Married.

If A Well-constituted Individual Refrains From Blazoning Aught Amiss Or Calamitous In His Family, A Nation In The Like Circumstance May Without Reproach Be Equally Discreet.

Time Is Made Up Of Various Ages; And Each Thinks Its Own A Novelty.

Genius Is Full Of Trash.

None But A Good Man Is Really A Living Man, And The More Good Any Man Does, The More He Really Lives. All The Rest Is Death, Or Belongs To It.

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.

Delight,--top-gallant Delight Is To Him, Who Acknowledges No Law Or Lord, But The Lord His God, And Is Only A Patriot To Heaven.

Faith And Philosophy Are Air, But Events Are Brass.

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

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

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.

You Must Have Plenty Of Sea-room To Tell The Truth In.

Telling The Truth

It May Seem Strange That Of All Men Sailors Should Be Tinkering At Their Last Wills And Testaments, But There Are No People In The World More Fond Of That Diversion.

There Is Nothing So Slipperily Alluring As Sadness; We Become Sad In The First Place By Having Nothing Stirring To Do; We Continue In It, Because We Have Found A Snug Sofa At Last.

Why, Ever Since Adam, Who Has Got To The Meaning Of This Great Allegory - The World? Then We Pygmies Must Be Content To Have Out Paper Allegories But Ill Comprehended.

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

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.

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.

The Stillness Of The Calm Is Awful. His Voice Begins To Grow Strange And Portentous. He Feels It In Him Like Something Swallowed Too Big For The Esophagus. It Keeps Up A Sort Of Involuntary Interior Humming In Him, Like A Live Beetle. His Cranium Is A Dome Full Of Reverberations. The Hollows Of His Very Bones Are As Whispering Galleries. He Is Afraid To Speak Loud, Lest He Be Stunned; Like The Man In The Bass Drum.

It Is Only When Caught In The Swift, Sudden Turn Of Death, That Mortals Realise The Silent, Subtle, Ever-present Perils Of Life.

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.

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

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

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

Beneath Those Stars Is A Universe Of Gliding Monsters.

A Smile Is The Chosen Vehicle Of All Ambiguities.

Let America Add Mexico To Texas, And Pile Cuba Upon Canada; Let The English Overswarm All India, And Hang Out Their Blazing Banner From The Sun; Two Thirds Of This Terraqueous Globe Are The Nantucketer's. For The Sea Is His; He Owns It.

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.

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.

Dollars Damn Me; And The Malicious Devil Is Forever Grinning In Upon Me, Holding The Door Ajar. ... What I Feel Most Moved To Write, That Is Banned - It Will Not Pay. Yet, Altogether, Write The Other Way I Cannot. So The Product Is A Final Hash, And All My Books Are Botches.

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

Failure Is The Test Of Greatness.

Truth Is In Things, And Not In Words.

There Was About All The Romans A Heroic Tone Peculiar To Ancient Life. Their Virtues Were Great And Noble, And These Virtues Madethem Great And Noble. They Possessed A Natural Majesty That Was Not Put On And Taken Off At Pleasure, As Was That Of Certain Eastern Monarchs When They Put On Or Took Off Their Garments Of Tyrian Dye. It Is Hoped That This Is Not Wholly Lost From The World, Although The Sense Of Earthly Vanity Inculcated By Christianity May Have Swallowed It Up In Humility.

At Last The Anchor Was Up, The Sails Were Set, And Off We Glided. It Was A Sharp, Cold Christmas; And As The Short Northern Day Merged Into Night, We Found Ourselves Almost Broad Upon The Wintry Ocean, Whose Freezing Spray Cased Us In Ice, As In Polished Armor.

To The Last, I Grapple With Thee; From Hell's Heart, I Stab At Thee; For Hate's Sake, I Spit My Last Breath At Thee.

Standing Navies, As Well As Standing Armies, Serve To Keep Alive The Spirit Of War Even In The Meek Heart Of Peace. In Its Very Embers And Smoulderings, They Nourish That Fatal Fire, And Half-pay Officers, As The Priests Of Mars, Yet Guard The Temple, Though No God Be There.

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

But The Past Is Passed; Why Moralize Upon It? Forget It. See, Yon Bright Son Has Forgotten It All, And The Blue Sea, And The Blue Sky; These Have Turned Over New Leaves. Because They Have No Memory . . . Because They Are Not Human.

Hope Is The Struggle Of The Soul, Breaking Loose From What Is Perishable, And Attesting Her Eternity.

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.

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

I Try All Things, I Achieve What I Can.

Never Joke At Funerals, Or During Business Transactions.

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.

Were Not Meant To Be

To Certain Temperaments, Especially When Previously Agitated By Any Deep Feeling, There Is Perhaps Nothing More Exasperating, Andwhich Sooner Explodes All Self-command, Than The Coarse, Jeering Insolence Of A Porter, Cabman, Or Hack-driver.

Ah, Happiness Courts The Light So We Deem The World Is Gay. But Misery Hides Aloof So We Deem That Misery There Is None.

Top-heavy Was The Ship As A Dinnerless Student With All Aristotle In His Head.

Genius, All Over The World, Stands Hand In Hand, And One Shock Of Recognition Runs The Whole Circle Round.

Who In The Rainbow Can Draw The Line Where The Violet Tint Ends And The Orange Tint Begins?

Hell Is An Idea First Born On An Undigested Apple Dumpling.

Madman! Look Through My Eyes If Thou Hast None Of Thine Own.

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.

Though The Ancients Were Ignorant Of The Principles Of Christianity There Were In Them The Germs Of Its Spirit.

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.

Let Us Waive That Agitated National Topic, As To Whether Such Multitudes Of Foreign Poor Should Be Landed On Our American Shores;let Us Waive It, With The One Only Thought, That If They Can Get Here, They Have God's Right To Come.

No Town-bred Dandy Will Compare With A Country-bred One- I Mean A Downright Bumpkin Dandy- A Fellow That, In The Dog-days Of Summer, Will Mow His Two Acres In Buckskin Gloves For Fear Of Tanning His Hands.

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

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

And Yet Self-knowledge Is Thought By Some Not So Easy. Who Knows, My Dear Sir, But For A Time You May Have Taken Yourself For Somebody Else? Stranger Things Have Happened.

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.

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

Be Sure Of This, O Young Ambition, All Mortal Greatness Is But Disease.

There's Something Ever Egotistical In Mountain-tops And Towers, And All Other Grand And Lofty Things.

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

Everyone Knows That In Most People's Estimation, To Do Anything Cooly Is To Do It Genteelly.

All Truth Is Profound.

Aid My Disillusionment, My Friend!

Disillusionment

Of The Quaking Recruit, Three Pitched Battles Make A Grim Grenadier; And He Who Shrank From The Muzzle Of A Cannon, Is Now Ready To Yield His Mustache For A Sponge.

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

Man Is A Money-making Animal, Which Propensity Too Often Interferes With His Benevolence.

Evil Is The Chronic Malady Of The Universe, And Checked In One Place, Breaks Forth In Another.

I Have Written A Wicked Book, And Feel Spotless As The Lamb.

I Will Frankly Confess That After Passing A Few Weeks In The Valley Of The Marquesas, I Formed A Higher Estimate Of Human Nature Than I Had Ever Before Entertained. But, Alas, Since Then I Have Been One Of The Crew Of A Man-of- War, And The Pent-up Wickedness Of Five Hundred Men Has Nearly Overturned All My Previous Theories.

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.

All Experience Teaches That, Whenever There Is A Great National Establishment, Employing Large Numbers Of Officials, The Public Must Be Reconciled To Support Many Incompetent Men; For Such Is The Favoritism And Nepotism Always Prevailing In The Purlieus Of These Establishments, That Some Incompetent Persons Are Always Admitted, To The Exclusion Of Many Of The Worthy.

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.

In Our Man-of-war World, Life Comes In At One Gangway And Death Goes Overboard At The Other. Under The Man-of-war Scourge, Cursesmix With Tears; And The Sigh And The Sob Furnish The Bass To The Shrill Octave Of Those Who Laugh To Drown Buried Griefs Of Their Own.

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

Book! You Lie There; The Fact Is, You Books Must Know Your Places. You'll Do To Give Us The Bare Words And Facts, But We Come In To Supply The Thoughts.

When A Companion's Heart Of Itself Overflows, The Best One Can Do Is To Do Nothing.

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

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!

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

A True Military Officer Is In One Particular Like A True Monk. Not With More Self-abnegation Will The Latter Keep His Vows Of Monastic Obedience Than The Former His Vows Of Allegiance To Martial Duty.

...that One Most Perilous And Long Voyage Ended, Only Begins A Second; And A Second Ended, Only Begins A Third, And So On, For Ever And For Aye. Such Is The Endlessness, Yea, The Intolerableness Of All Earthly Effort.

True Work Is The Necessity Of Poor Humanity's Earthly Condition. The Dignity Is In Leisure. Besides, 99 Hundredths Of All The Work Done In The World Is Either Foolish And Unnecessary, Or Harmful And Wicked.

The Food Of Thy Soul Is Light And Space; Feed It Then On Light And Space. But The Food Of Thy Body Is Champagne And Oysters; Feed It Then On Champagne And Oysters; And So Shall It Merit A Joyful Resurrection, If There Is Any To Be.

Ignorance Is The Father Of All Fear.

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

At Banquets Surfeit Not, But Fill; Partake, And Retire; And Eat Not Again Till You Crave.

Only The Man Who Says No Is Free

The Pleasure Of Leaving Home, Care-free, With No Concern But To Enjoy, Has Also As A Pendant The Pleasure Of Coming Back To The Old Hearthstone, The Home To Which, However Traveled, The Heart Still Fondly Turns, Ignoring The Burden Of Its Anxieties And Cares.

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is It I, God, Or Who, That Lifts This Arm? But If The Great Sun Move Not Of Himself; But Is 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.

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

Nature Is Nobody's Ally.

He, Who, In View Of Its Inconsistencies, Says Of Human Nature The Same That, In View Of Its Contrasts, Is Said Of The Divine Nature, That It Is Past Finding Out, Thereby Evinces A Better Appreciation Of It Than He Who, By Always Representing It In A Clear Light, Leaves It To Be Inferred That He Clearly Knows All About It.

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

They Talk Of The Dignity Of Work. The Dignity Is In Leisure.

To Be Hated Cordially, Is Only A Left-handed Compliment.

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

Niggards Are Oftentimes Neat.

We May Have Civilized Bodies And Yet Barbarous Souls. We Are Blind To The Real Sights Of This World; Deaf To Its Voice; And Dead To Its Death. And Not Till We Know, That One Grief Outweighs Ten Thousand Joys Will We Become What Christianity Is Striving To Make Us.

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.

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