Moby Dick: or, the White Whale

by Herman Melville

Call me Ishmael.

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.

I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.

he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.