I and My Chimney

“Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition.””

— Herman Melville

“But 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. And much this way it was with me.””

— Herman Melville

“What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself”

— Herman Melville

“Eternity is not ours by right; and, alone, unrequited sufferings here, form no title thereto, unless resurrections are reserved for maltreated brutes. Suffering is suffering; be the sufferer man, brute, or thing.””

— Herman Melville

“Sailors are the only class of men who now-a-days see anything like stirring adventure; and many things which to fire-side people appear strange and romantic, to them seem as common-place as a jacket out at elbows.””

— Herman Melville

“I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward””

— Herman Melville

“With no perceptible trace of the vainglorious about him, rather with the offhand unaffectedness of natural regality, he seemed to accept the spontaneous homage of his shipmates.””

— Herman Melville

“hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling;””

— Herman Melville

“for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.””

— Herman Melville