Moby Dick

by Herman Melville

But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

And what is it, thought I, after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.

Not superficial - reserves judgement

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

sailors’ wives and widows.

how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss;

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

In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.

For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains

and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.

Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness!

taste—his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable.

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and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself.

He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply.

But what is worship?—to do the will of God? that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me—that is the will of God.

yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.

even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two.

There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff;

He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds.