Date: 1851

"No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1851

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

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1851

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it...

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: November and December 1853, 1856

"To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange wilfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1855, 1856

"His mind appeared unstrung, if not still more seriously affected."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1855, 1856

"Ah, these currents spin one's head round almost as much as they do the ship."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1855, 1856

"As his foot pressed the half-damp, half-dry sea-mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom cat's-paw--an islet of breeze, unheralded, unfollowed--as this ghostly cat's-paw came fanning his cheek, his glance fell upon the row of small, round dead-lights, all closed like coppered eyes of the c...

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1855, 1856

"For a moment, knot in hand, and knot in head, Captain Delano stood mute; while, without further heeding him, the old man was now intent upon other ropes."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1855, 1856

"'Ah, my dear Don Amasa,' Don Benito once said, 'at those very times when you thought me so morose and ungrateful--nay when, as you now admit, you half thought me plotting your murder--at those very times my heart was frozen; I could not look at you, thinking of what, both on board this ship and ...

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1855, 1856

"The body was burned to ashes; but for many days, the head, that hive of subtlety, fixed on a pole in the Plaza, met, unabashed, the gaze of the whites; and across the Plaza looked toward St. Bartholomew's church, in whose vaults slept then, as now, the recovered bones of Aranda; and across the R...

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)