“Total Security”
David Roberts
British

By arming themselves
with sufficient bombs
to destroy the world,
and being
the world's number one country
at dropping bombs
America is making enemies
of the entire human race.

If the human race
ever dares to strike back
America will have no alternative
but to destroy the entire world
in self-defence.

Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 1 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. 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 requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

No, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Who ain’t a slave?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

On no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the south.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

But it's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Would he not far rather... yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Supper? -- you want supper? Supper’ll be ready directly.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“At the Bomb Testing Site”
William Stafford
1914-1993 American

At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
as if something might happen.

It was looking at something farther off
than people could see, an important scene
acted in stone for little selves
at the flute end of consequences.

There was just a continent without much on it
under a sky that never cared less.
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.
The hands gripped hard on the desert.

Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 2 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

How it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Yes, there is death in this business of whaling -- a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“He oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“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.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“At last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Delight is to him -- a far, far upward, and inward delight -- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?”

He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed, and he was left alone in the place.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

He had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

One most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea.... There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“But as I was going to say, if thou wantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one leg.”

“What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?”

“Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat! -- ah, ah!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

For some of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another. This world pays dividends.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“He says he's our man, Bildad,” said Peleg, “he wants to ship.”

“Dost thee?” said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me.

“I dost,” said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier stranger foes than whales.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers -- it takes the shark out of 'em.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale