All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
Herman Melville...in certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.
Herman MelvilleIt is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
Herman MelvilleWhere lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundlingโs father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
Herman Melville