Moby Dick

by Herman Melville

Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues,— north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.

meditation and water are wedded for ever.

I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs,

The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor,

and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.

there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid.

The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,— what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

It was a queer sort of place—a

being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison.

It was cold as Iceland— no fire at all—the landlord said he couldn’t afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers.

I began to feel suspicious of this “dark complexioned” harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did.

the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping partner one,

I don’t know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply.

All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

I turned in, and never slept better in my life.

I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife.

New Bedford is a queer place.

Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.

If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan’s breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. 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.

this sudden flame of friendship

I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I.

Now, Queequeg is my fellow man.

we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world.

some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg— a cosy, loving pair.

Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time from home.

“He say,” said I, “that you came near kill-e that man there,” pointing to the still shivering greenhorn. “Kill-e,” cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly expression of disdain, “ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!”

Oh! sweet friends, hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits, and salted pork cut up into little flakes! the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.

Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes.

Mrs. Hussey wore a polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account books bound in superior old shark-skin.

it was some sort of Lent or Ramadan, or day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo that day;

He never used to swear, though, at his men,

Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him

could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool;

other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.

for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head.

“No need of profane words,

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided.

Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head,

Islanders seem to make the best whalemen.