Reader > Reader's Quotes

“...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.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick oder Der Wal

“A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, the Whale

“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath...”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for avast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul;
whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses,
and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet;
and especially when my hypos get such an upper hand of me,
that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off-
then, I account it high time to get to a bookstore as soon as I can.
That is my substitute for the pistol and ball.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“[T]here is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows -- a colorless, all- color of atheism from which we shrink?”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“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.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“..for we all are dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending..”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the life-time of his God?”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Hast seen the white whale?”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

“All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick: or, the White Whale

“Ignorance is the parent of fear ...”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale