For the scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past; and the silent reminiscence of hardships departed is sweeter than the presence of delight.
There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.
Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee!
That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing focus of the glassy ocean’s immeasurable burning-glass.
Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm.
No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this slippery world that can hold, man.
The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true – not.
Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest.
Yes, I have heard something curious on that score sir, how that a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will still be pricking him at time.
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.
The devil fetch ya, ya ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep.
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. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.
Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
Usher – threadbare.
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Nature is nobody’s ally.
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.