Status Updates From Herman Melville: Redburn, W...

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?

Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.

The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.

Had any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man!

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 do to me—that is the will of God.

But legislators do not always square their statutes by those of the Bible.

My book experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely, that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence...

Finished Redburn. Now starting White Jacket.

At the roll of the drum, the sailors assemble round a large tub, or cask, filled with the liquid; and, as their names are called off by the midshipman, they step up and regale themselves from a little tin measure called a “tot.” No high-liver helping himself to Tokay off a well-polished side-board, smacks his lips with more mighty satisfaction that the sailor does over this tot.

But thus it is, that the very hardships to which such beings are subjected, instead of uniting them, only tends, by imbittering their tempers, to set them against each other; and thus they themselves drive the strongest rivet in the chain, by which their social superiors hold them subject.

A thorough sailor…he must be a sort of Jack of all trades, in order to master his own. And this, perhaps, in a greater or lesser degree, is pretty much the case with all things else; for you know nothing till you know all; which is the reason we never know any thing.