There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.

The profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelop of the storm, and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion.

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters.

Niggards are oftentimes neat.

Leviathan is not the biggest fish; — I have heard of Krakens.

The stillness of the calm is awful. His voice begins to grow strange and portentous. He feels it in him like something swallowed too big for the esophagus. It keeps up a sort of involuntary interior humming in him, like a live beetle. His cranium is a dome full of reverberations. The hollows of his very bones are as whispering galleries. He is afraid to speak loud, lest he be stunned; like the man in the bass drum.