Call me Ishmael.
But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.
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!
Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
All the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do-remember that-and hence, He oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
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.
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.
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
A laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s queer.
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity.