Herman Melville Quotes - Page 12 | Just Great DataBase

...In fact, tell him I've diddled him, and perhaps somebody else.

He offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.

Of erections how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!

What he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him.

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.

ما أشد ما أحتقر الأرض ذات الحواجز والإتاوات والجوازات! تلك الطريق العامة التي خدّدتها نعال العبودية وحوافرها! وتحوّلتُ إلى الإعجاب بعظمة البحر الذي لا تنطبع فيه آثار.

But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a moment’s consideration will teach that, however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

Born in throes, ‘t is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then!

هب أننا أخطأنا خطأ فادحا في فهم مسألة الحياة والموت. هب أن ما يسمونه على هذه الأرض "ظلي" إنما هو جوهري الصحيح. هب أننا حين ننظر إلى الأمور الروحية نشبه السرطان الذي يرى الشمس من خلال الماء فيظن أن الماء الكثيف هو أشد أنواع الهواء شفافية! هب أن جسدي ليس إلا الحمى الذي يأوي إليه وجودي الأفضل. فليأخذ جسدي من شاء فإنه ليس أنا!

I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.

but the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was none in his spade

Round the World! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.

I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.

And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend this face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks glasses! of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster— tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone?

So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have "broken his digester.

For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merrymakings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.

It's a mutual, joint-stock world, all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.

... an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.