Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters.
It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head
Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
The dinner-hour is the summer of the day: full of sunshine, I grant; but not like the mellow autumn of supper.
The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
Climate of Egypt in winter is the reign of spring upon earth, & summer in the air, and tranquility in the heat.
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
All we discover has been with us since the sun began to roll; and much we discover, is not worth the discovering.
That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped.
The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn.
Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old; but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.
Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them.
There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.
There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women.
Bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the fire-side.
If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury; if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.
We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
This divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror.
The shadows of things are greater than themselves; and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.
There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
Until we understand that our grief outweighs a thousand joys, we will never understand what Christianity is all about.
So long as a man-of-war exists, it must ever remain a picture of much that is tyrannical and repelling in human nature.
In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
To be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.
The man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.
Of all nature's animated kingdoms, fish are the most unchristian, inhospitable, heartless, and cold-blooded of creatures.
People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.
Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it; tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.
If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes after.
Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.
Implacable I, the implacable Sea; Implacable most when most I smile serene- Pleased, not appeased, by myriad wrecks in me.
In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.
Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.
Youth is the time when hearts are large, And stirring wars Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn To the blade it draws.
I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.