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a man can be honest in any sort of skin.
I am no coward, but what to make of this headpeddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.
What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water,
"Ah, noble ship," the angel seemed to say, "beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling off— serenest azure is at hand."
all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do—remember that— and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade.
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
In all his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known.
Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah."
I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it.
I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.
Queequeg placed great confidence in the excellence of Yojo's judgment and surprising forecast of things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live whale's throat, and then jump after it? Answer, quick!"
Can't ye see the world where you stand?"
He's a queer man, Captain Ahab— so some think—but a good one.
what had been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him.
Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike— for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
we sallied out to board the Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones.
"Come along, Queequeg, let's leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?" "Elijah."
But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself.
"Holloa! Starbuck's astir," said the rigger. "He's a lively chief mate that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to." And so saying he went on deck, and we followed.
we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say.
if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent.
this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates.
"I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."
Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair.
The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard.
Now these three mates—Starbuck, Stubb and Flask, were momentous men.
First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected for his squire.
Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire.
Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked
How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen.
There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance.
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood.
To be short, then, a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him.
For we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.
They are the lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted a lucky omen.
God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!
Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his war-like but still deferential cubs.
There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory: there's the insanity of life!
For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner—
Sounds divine!
all whaleships' standing orders, "Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time."
"Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that white whale must be the same that some call Moby Dick."
"Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now.
"Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!"
"I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market."
