The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run

It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.

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.

Traveling takes the ink out of one's pen as well as the cash out of one's purse.

Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.

Of the quaking recruit, three pitched battles make a grim grenadier; and he who shrank from the muzzle of a cannon, is now ready to yield his mustache for a sponge.

It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.