So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
My body is but the lees of my better being.
Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.
It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.
Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness.
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
Delight is to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
Call me Ishmael.
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!
