Herman Melville

“The fiendlike skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth.”

“Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.”

“[T]here is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”

“A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.”

“Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant, I act under orders.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Come what will, one comfort's always left — that unfailing comfort is, it's all predestinated.”

“There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: - through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom). and then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If.”

“I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.”

“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.”

“Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.”

“All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”

“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.”

“To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.”

“There are hardly five critics in America; and several of them are asleep.”

“הישמרות אישית, אפילו כשהיא מוּנעת על ידי טעמים שאינם אנוכיים כל עיקר, ודאי אין היא צדקה מיוחדת באיש צבאי; ואילו אהבת הוד שאין לה שיעור, המשמשת עד תכלית חוש־חובה מעומק־הלב, היא ראש צדקותיו.”

“בו עוז ויופי נשקו. אגדות על מעשי גבורתו היו עוברות לפה. על החוף היה הוא האלוף; על פני המים – הדבּר; בכל הזדמנות כשרה – תמיד ראש וראשון.”

“ארבעים שנה אחרי הקרב קל מאוד למי שלא לחם לתת עצות.”