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There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.

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one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duelist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six-inch ...more

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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 smalle...more

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I would prefer not to.

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So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special ca...more

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The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating them, till they are left...more

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But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay br...more

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Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am th...more

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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...more

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But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.

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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...more

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One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviath...more

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When I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rathe...more

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There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath...

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It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and vener...more