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"Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I."
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"It seems when Opportunity knocks, Fate shows up to open the door."

"Some people would not be dead if they have not gotten the things or people they had prayed for."

"If we really exist merely to fulfill God's plan: then life is a television drama; with God being the scriptwriter, the director, and, the audience."

"Accidents are not accidents but precise arrivals at the wrong right time."
Explore more quotes by Herman Melville

"Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.-Why then do you try to 'enlarge' your mind? Subtilize it."

"In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans."

"Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister."

"Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none."

"But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth-pagans and all included-can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?-to do the will of God-that is worship. And what is the will of God?-to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me-that is the will of God."

"And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell."

"Who ain't a slave? Tell me that... I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way-either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content."

"Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat."
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