The Sphinx Quotes

“Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed — while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Your eyes are like fantastic moons
That shiver in some stagnant lake,
Your tongue is like a scarlet snake
That dances to fantastic tunes.
Your pulse makes poisonous melodies,
And your black throat is like the hole
Left by some torch or burning coal
On Saracenic tapestries.”
― Oscar Wilde, Oscar Wilde: Complete Poems

“What songless, tongueless ghost of sin
Crept through the curtains of the night
And saw my taper burning bright,
And knocked and bade you enter in?”
― Oscar Wilde, Oscar Wilde: Complete Poems