Herman Melville cytaty

strona 4

„Życie jest podróżą, która prowadzi do domu.”

„Otóż, jak już wspominałem, nie mam żadnych zastrzeżeń wobec religii jakiegokolwiek człowieka, bez względu na to, jaka ona jest - dopóki ów człowiek nie zabija czy nie lży innego, dlatego że ten jej również nie wyznaje. Kiedy jednak religia tego człowieka staje się wręcz opętana, kiedy okazuje się oczywistą dla niego udręką i koniec końców czyni tę naszą ziemię zajazdem wielce niewygodnym do mieszkania - wtedy uważam, że wielki czas wziąć owego osobnika na stronę i przedyskutować z nim rzecz całą.”

„Imię moje: Izmael. Przed kilku laty — mniejsza o ścisłość jak dawno temu — mając niewiele czy też nie mając wcale pieniędzy w sakiewce, a nie widząc nic szczególnego, co by mnie interesowało na lądzie, pomyślałem sobie, że pożegluję nieco po morzach i obejrzę wodną część świata. Taki mam właśnie sposób odpędzania splinu i regulowania krwiobiegu. Gdy tylko stwierdzę, że usta wykrzywiają mi się ponuro, gdy tylko do duszy mej zawita wilgotny, dżdżysty listopad, gdy złapię się na tym, że mimowolnie przystaję przed składami trumien albo podążam za każdym napotkanym pogrzebem, a w szczególności, gdy moja hipochondria tak mnie opanuje, iż potrzeba mi silnych zasad moralnych, by się powstrzymać od rozmyślnego wyjścia na ulicę i metodyczmego strącania ludziom z głów kapeluszy — wtedy uznaję, że już wielki czas udać się na morze jak najrychlej. To jest moja namiastka pistoletu i kuli. Katon z filozoficzną oracją rzuca się na ostrze swego miecza; ja spokojnie siadam na okręt. Nie ma w tym nic zdumiewającego. Gdyby tylko zdawano sobie z tego sprawę, okazałoby się, że niemal wszyscy ludzie, każdy na swój sposób, w takiej czy innej chwili, żywią wobec oceanu niemal te same co ja uczucia.”

„I wreszcie wyruszam na morze zawsze jako majtek z uwagi na zbawienny dla zdrowia ruch i czyste powietrze na pokładzie forkasztelu. A ponieważ na tym świecie wiatry wiejące od przodu znacznie przeważają nad wiatrami od rufy (to znaczy, o ile się nigdy nie pogwałci zasady pitagorejskiej), zatem w większości wypadków płuca komodora stojącego na mostku kapitańskim otrzymują powietrze z drugiej ręki - od majtków na forkasztelu. Jemu się zdaje, że pierwszy nim oddycha; tak jednakże nie jest.”

„Po co podniosłem cały ten rwetes - pomyślałem sobie - ten człowiek jest istotą ludzką jak i ja; ma akurat tyle samo powodów, by lękać się mnie, co ja, by lękać się jego. Lepiej spać z trzeźwym kanibalem niż z pijanym chrześcijaninem.”

„Śmiech to najmądrzejsza i najłatwiejsza odpowiedź na wszystko, co dziwaczne.”

„Choć jednak niewiele bywa prawdziwej wiedzy, przecie książek jest mnóstwo.”

„Dobry śmiech to jednakże wyborna rzecz i w dodatku raczej zbyt rzadka; tym gorzej, że tak jest. A więc jeśli ktokolwiek może swą własną osobą dostarczyć komuś materiału do przedniego żartu, niechże się nie wzdraga, ale niech z tego sam pogodnie korzysta i pozwoli innym wykorzystać się w ten sposób.
Bądźcie też pewni, że w człowieku, który ma w sobie jakiś rys godny szczodrego śmiechu, tkwi coś więcej, niż się tego może spodziewacie."
- Ismael, Moby Dick”

„Ten świat jest wspólny, jest spółką akcyjną wszystkich ludzi pod każdą szerokością geograficzną. My kanibale, musimy jakoś dopomagać tym chrześcijanom.”

“The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.”

“For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.”

“If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.”

“Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, as well as philanthropists toward the blacks our fellow-men. In all things, and toward all, we are enjoined to do as we would be done by.”

“Oh, give me again the rover's life — the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it, sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.”

“Youth is the time when hearts are large,
And stirring wars
Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn
To the blade it draws.”

“Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilisation and christianize Christendom?”

“Certain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. For, in certain moods, no man can weigh this world, without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.”

“The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.”

“What troops
Of generous boys in happiness thus bred —
Saturnians through life's Tempe led,
Went from the North and came from the South,
With golden mottoes in the mouth,
To lie down midway on a bloody bed.”

“The truth seems to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world, — at least, with respect to himself. Personally, I doubt not, that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to judge — that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public”

“Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.”

“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”

“If possible, not to let the men so much as surmise that their officers anticipate aught amiss from them is the tacit rule in a military ship. And the more that some sort of trouble should really be apprehended the more do the officers keep that apprehension to themselves; tho' not the less unostentatious vigilance may be augmented.
In the present instance the sentry placed over the prisoner had strict orders to let no one have communication with him but the Chaplain. And certain unobtrusive measures were taken absolutely to insure this point.”

“I cannot analyse my heart, though it then stood still within me. But the thing that swayed me to my purpose was not altogether the thought that Captain Claret was about to degrade me, and that I had taken an oath with my soul that he should not. No, I felt my man's manhood so bottomless within me, that no word, no blow, no scourge of Captain Claret could cut me deep enough for that. I but swung to an instinct in me — the instinct diffused through all animated nature, the same that prompts even a worm to turn under the heel. Locking souls-with him, I meant to drag Captain Claret from this earthly tribunal of his to that of Jehovah and let Him decide between us. No other way could I escape the scourge.”

“His was the scorn which thinks it not worth the while to be scornful. Those he most scorned, never knew it.”

“Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!”

“"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable," was his mildly cadaverous reply.”

“Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity — reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel — Art.”

“Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.”

“At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these — "God bless Captain Vere!"”

“What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event — the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.”

“At the height of their madness
The night winds pause,
Recollecting themselves;
But no lull in these wars.”

“We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”

“And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous- a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!”

“The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?)”

“The more and the more that he wrote, and the deeper and the deeper that he dived, Pierre saw the everlasting elusiveness of Truth; the universal lurking insincerity of even the greatest and purest written thoughts. Like knavish cards, the leaves of all great books were covertly packed. He was but packing one set the more; and that a very poor jaded set and pack indeed. So that there was nothing he more spurned, than his own aspirations; nothing he more abhorred than the loftiest part of himself. The brightest success, now seemed intolerable to him, since he so plainly saw, that the brightest success could not be the sole offspring of Merit; but of Merit for the one thousandth part, and nine hundred and ninety-nine combining and dovetailing accidents for the rest.”

“There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan. Yet the work of Reconstruction, if admitted to be feasible at all, demands little but common sense and Christian charity. Little but these? These are much.”

“But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.”