“And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.”

“In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.”

“There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.”

“Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”

“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”

“Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet!—that one strives, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now.”

“Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. 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. Me thinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.”