Start her, now; give 'em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy-start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool-cucumbers is the word-easy, easy-only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys-that's all. Start her!

Though essaying but a sportive sail, I was driven from my course by a blast re sistless; and ill-provided, young, and bowed by the brunt of things before my prime, still fly before the gale. ... If after all these fearful fainting trances, the verdict be, the golden haven was not gained; yet in bold quest thereof, better to sink in boundless deeps than float on vulgar shoals; and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do.

We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.

The terrors of truth and dart of death To faith alike are vain.

Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?

The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.