For the full review of Moby-Dick, look here. Having highlighted its strength as the well-turned phrase though, it only seemed fair to share a few. Have fun!

On Human Nature

“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 marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills…”

“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.”

“The mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed g radations, and at the last one pause:- through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trade the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally.”

On the Ocean

“Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one”

“The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the eternal honour of our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men’s lamp-feeders.”

On Meaning in Life

“To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely contrast. Nothing exists in itself.”

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

“If we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.”