Term
| Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is damp, drizzly November in my soul..." |
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Definition
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Term
| Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. |
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Definition
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Term
| For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. |
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Definition
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Term
| What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself-the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. |
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Definition
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Term
| There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrises and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel mysteriously drawn towards him. |
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Definition
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Term
| I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshiping his piece of wood? |
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Definition
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Term
| He only asked for water--fresh water-- something to wipe the brine off; that done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying to himself--It's a mutual joint-stock world, in all meridians." |
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Definition
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Term
| A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that. |
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Definition
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Term
| I don't know exactly what's the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the house; a sort of sick, and yet he don't look so. In fact, he ain't sick; but no, he isn't well either. |
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Definition
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Term
| He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man |
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Definition
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Term
| And when these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a gobular brain and a ponderous heart;...a mighty pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies. |
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Definition
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Term
| A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomine of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. |
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Definition
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Term
| Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition. |
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Definition
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Term
| There is a careful a man as you'll ever find anywhere in this fishery. |
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Definition
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Term
| And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men...yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man. |
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Definition
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Term
| A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air. |
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Definition
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Term
| Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. |
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Definition
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Term
| For, like his nose, his short black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. |
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Definition
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Term
| A short, stout, ruddy, young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathan had personally and hereditarily affronted him. |
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Definition
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Term
| So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways...that in his poor opinion, the wonderous whale was but a species of magnified mouse. |
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Definition
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Term
| If money's to be the measure, man, and the accountants have computed their great counting house the globe...then, let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here! |
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Definition
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Term
| All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks, But in each event--in the living act, the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! |
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Definition
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Term
| I would strike the sun if it insulted me. |
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Definition
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Term
| Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries a lad with lean brow and hollow eyes; given to unseasonable meditativeness. |
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Definition
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Term
| All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. |
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Definition
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Term
| There, then, he sat, holding up the imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. |
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Definition
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Term
| Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all those creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began. |
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Definition
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Term
| For as this appalling surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. |
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Definition
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Term
| There are those sharks now over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough and rare? |
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Definition
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Term
| Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up the damndest row as ever you can; fill you dam' bellies 'till dey bust--and den die. |
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Definition
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Term
| But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve around me... |
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Definition
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Term
| For all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them have intuitions. |
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Definition
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Term
| Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will... Thou thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. |
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Definition
| Moby-Dick: Ishmael about the whale |
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Term
| While bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever. |
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Definition
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Term
| ___ though over tender-hearted, was at bottom, very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightnes peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities... |
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Definition
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Term
| Though, ere long will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in Conn |
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Definition
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Term
| I feared I should not be able to write, from mere memory, a statement so minute and connected as to have the appearance of that truth it would really possess, barring only the natural unavoidable exaggeration to which all of us are when detailing events which have had powerful influence in exciting the imaginative faculties. |
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Definition
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Term
| He strongly advised me, among others, to prepare at once a full account of what I had seen and undergone, and trust the shrewdness and common sense of the public--insisting, with great plausibility, that however roughly, as regards the authorship, my book should be got up, its very uncouthness, if there were any, would give it all the better chance of being received as truth. |
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Definition
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Term
| My father was a respectable trader in sea-stories at Nantucket, where I was born. |
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Definition
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Term
| In this boat we were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks in the world; and, when I now think of them, it appears to me a thousand wonders that I am alive today. |
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Definition
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Term
| He proceed to talk very coolly, however, saying he knew that I supposed him intoxicated, but that he was never more sober in his life. |
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Definition
| Arthur Gordon Pym: Augustus |
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Term
| Hardly had I come to this resolution, when, suddenly, a loud and long scream or yell, as if from the throats of a thousand demons... |
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Definition
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Term
| ...our deliverance seemed to have been brought about by two of those almost inconceivable pieces of good fortune which are attributed by the wise and pious to the special interference of Providence. |
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Definition
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Term
| It is possible, however, that my companions may have entertained the same opinion of their own condition as I did of mine, and that I may have unwittingly been guilty of the same extravagances and imbecilities as themselves--this is a matter which cannot be determined. |
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Definition
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Term
| I had calculated that one at least of the two former would be found still possessed of sufficient strength of mind to side with myself in resisting any attempt to execute so dreadful a proposal. |
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Definition
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Term
| I suffered less than any of us, being much less reduced in frame, and retaining my powers of mind in a surprising degree, while the rest were completely prostrated in intellect... |
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Definition
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Term
| The islanders for whom we entertained such inordinate feelings of esteem were among the most barbarous, subtle, and bloodthirsty wretches that ever contaminated the face of the globe. |
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Definition
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Term
| The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral, as with an iron rod-- or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly-- thus at once depriving it of life... |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Hawthorne |
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Term
| this forbidding scowl was the innocent result of her nearsightedness, and an effort so to concentrate her powers of vision as to substitute a firm outline of the object instead of a vague one. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Hepzibah |
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Term
| representing the stern features of a Puritanic-looking personage, in a skull-cap, with a laced band and a grizzly beard; holding a Bible with one hand, and in the other uplifting an iron sword-hilt. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Col. Pyncheon |
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Term
| It is a likeness of a young man, in a silken dressing-gown of an old-fashion, the soft richness of which is well adapted to the countenance of reverie, with its full tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that seem to indicate not so much capacity of thought, as gentle and voluptuous emotion. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Clifford |
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Term
| One perceived him to be a personage of marked influence and authority; and, especially, you could feel just as certain that he was opulent as if he had exhibited his bank account... |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Judge Pyncheon |
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Term
| The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet so orderly and obedient to common rules, as you at once recognized her to be, was widely in contrast, at the moment, with everything about her. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Phoebe |
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Term
| But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what dismal place it may, instantaneously creates for itself a propriety in being there, so did it seem altogether fir that the girl should be standing at the threshold. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Phoebe |
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Term
| He had the strangest companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other new-fangled and ill-fitting garments |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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Term
| she had been enriched by poverty, developed by sorrow, elevated by the strong and solitary affection of her life, and thus endowed with heroism... |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Hepzibah |
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Term
| And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas... |
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Definition
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Term
| Let me make a clean breast of it herer, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe resolving in me, how could I-- being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude. |
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Definition
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Term
| And so, through the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. |
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Definition
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Term
| while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, or any sort whatsoever. |
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Definition
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Term
| The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. |
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Definition
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Term
| Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world... |
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Definition
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Term
| he seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the first time beginning in interpret for himself... |
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Definition
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Term
| There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here, -- three peaks as proud as Lucifer. |
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Definition
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Term
| A dark valley between three mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint earthly symbol. |
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Definition
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Term
| Look, you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one chapter; and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. |
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Definition
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Term
| let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearthstone! |
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Definition
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Term
| Come, my Captain, study out the course , and let us away! See, see! the boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the hill! |
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Definition
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Term
| I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much dare? |
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Definition
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Term
| Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? but if the great sun move not himself... |
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Definition
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Term
| Foolish toy! babies plaything of haughty admirals... |
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Definition
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Term
| Thou canst tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be tomorrow noon... |
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Definition
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Term
| Accessory, perhaps to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to revive the spirits of his crew... |
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Definition
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Term
| Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor nor more?...Our souls are like orphans whose unwedded mothers die bearing them... |
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Definition
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Term
| It does seem to me that men make a wonderful mistake in trying to heap up property upon property...I'm one of those people who think that infinity is big enough for us all-- and eternity long enough! |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Uncle Venner |
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Term
| But for this short life of ours, one would like a house and a moderate garden-spot of one's own |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Phoebe |
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Term
| It might so fascinate him that he would hardly be restrained from plunging into the surging stream of human sympathies. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Clifford |
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Term
| Fear nothing, --it is over now,-- but had I taken the plunge, and survived it, methinks it would have made me another man! |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Clifford |
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Term
| He needed a shock; or perhaps he required to take a deep, deep plunge into the ocean of human life... |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Clifford |
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Term
| She yearned to take him by the hand, and go and kneel down, they two together...to kneel down among people, and be reconciled to God and man at once. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Hepzibah |
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Term
| We are ghosts! We have no right among human beings,-- no right anywhere but in this old house... |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Clifford |
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Term
| She was less girlish than when he first beheld her alighting from the omnibus; less girlish, but more a woman |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Phoebe |
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Term
| Homeless as he had been,--continually changing his whereabout, and, therefore, responsible neither to public opinion nor individuals...he had never violated the innermost man. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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Term
| Man's own youth is the world's youth...he was a young man still, and therefore looked upon the world...as a tender stripling, capable of being improved into all that it ought to be, but scarcely yet had shown the remotest promise of becoming. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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Term
| Shall we never get rid of the past? |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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Term
| It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body! |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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Term
| We worship the living Deity according to dead men's forms and creeds. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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Term
| I doubt whether even our public edifices...ought to be built of such permanent materials as stone or brick |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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Term
| The country-house is certainly a very fine one, so far as plan goes...the propriety of embodying so excellent a piece of domestic architecture in stone, rather than in wood...an thus giving that sense of permanence which I consider essential to the happiness of an one moment. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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Term
| The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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Term
| You are but doing over again, in another shape, what your ancestor before you did, and sending down to your posterity the curse inherited from him! |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Hepzibah about Judge Pyncheon |
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Term
| To a disposition like ___'s, at once speculative and active, there is no temptation so great as the opportunity of acquiring empire over the human spirit. |
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Definition
| House of Seven Gables: Holgrave |
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