It is plain and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankee, and operates differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton; ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle.
Herman MelvilleQueequeg 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.
Herman MelvilleThe ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
Herman MelvilleNature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have been abused.
Herman MelvilleAs with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
Herman MelvillePassion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted. And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean, are no measure of its power. In the present instance the stage is a scrubbed gun deck, and one of the external provocations a man-of-war's-man's spilled soup.
Herman Melville