Quotes from Herman Melville

Genius is full of trash.

Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.

Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true-- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.

And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.

What are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!

The pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

For backward or forward, eternity is the same; already have we been the nothing we dread to be.

But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought. Again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet that angel must hang!

For we all are dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending..

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. (moby dick chap 29 p123)