Moby Dick: or, the White Whale

by Herman Melville

there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.

While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap.