Herman MelvilleMacmillan, 1926 - 200 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Acushnet admiration Ahab American apprehension Battle-Pieces beauty Benito Cereno Billy Budd Blake boat C. M. Doughty Captain Delano chapter chief Clarel Confidence-Man craft crew cries dead death Emily Brontė England English eternal eyes father feel Gansevoort genius harpoon Hawthorne Hawthorne's heard heart Herman Melville Hunilla infinite island Israel Potter Jack Chase later less letter leviathan light living London Long Ghost look lyrical Mardi mate Melville's miles mind Moby-Dick Mocha Dick mother mysterious narrative native natural never novel Omoo Pacific passage passion Pequod Peter Gansevoort phrase Piazza Tales Pierre poems poet poetry prose published R. H. Dana reader Redburn reveal rhythm sailed sailor satire says scarcely seemed serene Shakespeare ship sight silence soul speaks spirit Stone Fleet story strange suppressions Taji things thought tion touch Typee uttered verse volume voyage whale White Jacket written wrote Yillah York
Popular passages
Page 92 - And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
Page 53 - What I feel most moved to write, that is banned, — it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot.
Page 123 - Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!
Page 123 - The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the groove; — ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it! but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone.
Page 51 - I am so pulled hither and thither by circumstances. The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose, — that, I fear, can seldom be mine.
Page 145 - The heart of the eternal pyramids, it seemed, wherein, by some strange magic, through the clefts, grass,seed, dropped by birds, had sprung. Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby.
Page 134 - Billy stood facing aft. At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance, were these: "God bless Captain Vere!
Page 124 - But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost...
Page 124 - ... and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.
Page 119 - And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath — O Father! — chiefly known to me by Thy rod — mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is — n nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?