DeanAmythe’s Reviews > Moby-Dick or, The Whale > Status Update

Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? Yet it is bright with many a gem; I, the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. ‘Tis iron—that I know—not gold. ‘Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!

Heerlijk tot in de nacht gelezen met m’n kat als boekensteun.

“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.”

“Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.”

Er is een hoofdstuk volledig gewijd aan beschrijven hoe de witte kleur van de titulaire walvis de hoofdpersoon ongemak en angst inboezemt. Mensen o mensen,— dit is zo’n verbluffend boek dat de productiviteit van de mijne sterk naar achter is gegaan.

“Glimpses do ye see of the mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort to keep the open independence of the sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore”

“Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say—here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith…”