Post here and I will give you a quote from Moby-Dick.

Yo!

Hi.

Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints - the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.

With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bits and fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!

Frigate!!!! It's like a book.

He wasn't kidding! Thanks Nate.

there's a few i got that i highlighted specifically for certain people here. but it's only like 3 or 4. So everyone else just gets regular pretty words.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

For small erections may be finished by their architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything.

it's innuendo and kinda like that line from Fight Club.

Hit me with your whale quotes.

And me.

But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of his - these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey.

The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a widow. That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

This one is for Ironman. I can't sit around here all day waiting for him to show up. I got shit to do.

also from: LVIII
Brit

No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.

Imke!

hello sailor.

amkalalala

With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I - being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude, - how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders,

Please.

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair.

In the interest of conserving posts to save the planet, please deliver this one unto Ludwig.

from: LVI
Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, And the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes

The French are the lads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles;

Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy.

This one reminds me of that Townes Van Zandt song, Rake. which is also awesome.

I don't think I can read Moby Dick. The quotes are apt and lovely, but I don't think I could read an entire book written like that.

Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions.

from: LXV
The Whale as a Dish

Go to the meat-market on a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.

oh man.. That's so perfect for me. Thanks!

Maybe I can just read 10 pages a day and read other things at the same time.

literaturize me nate.

That's the quote that really inspired this thread. I was going to give it to Bug, what with him being all vegetarian and all, but i found another one that I thought would suit him well and give him a little more dimension than just being "that food guy."

So, for Bug, a little fairy tale sampling...

from: LXXV
The Right Whale's Head - Contrasted View

the Right Whale's head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker's last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny.

Though nominally included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri.

you picked that just because it had the word "bears" in it didnt you?

Me dude?

actually i picked it because i thought the whole being in the world but not of it kinda suited you, but then I thought that might be a little presumptuous, and it seemed to be a little short for a quote and i started looking for another one, then i realized it had the bear part in there and slapped my forehead and said "This is the one!"

Its a good quote anyway. the alienation part does seem to suit me at times.

Now would all the waves were women, then I'd go drown, and chassee with them evermore! There's naught so sweet on earth - heaven may not match it! - as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.

Sweet, thanks Nate.

Well, I feel honored that I got that one. And I bet I will smile when I stumble across it in the book. Like running into a friend unexpectedly.

That's a good one for Bug, too. (You should read the zombie story he posted in the zombie Laura thread)

for Gordon Blackstone...

from: LIV
The Town-Ho's Story

" 'Moby-Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby-Dick?'
" 'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don; - but that would be too long a story.'

Me next!

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!

Aw, very nice.
(:

here's the other quote that inspired this thread. See if you can tell who it was for. (Even though it's not the one I would give him.)

from: LXXI
The Jeroboam's Story

"I tell thee again, Gabriel, that -" But again the boat tore ahead as if dragged by fiends.

hahaha. He'll love it. So which one did you finally choose for him?

Nightrious

from: XXIV
The Advocate

And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here, I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

Damn, that's like something he would write.

For that same reason, I also would have given him all of Chapter LXII - The Whiteness of the Whale.
But it's just too long to type all that out and post in here.

I'll have to ignore this thread until I finish the book.

I'll save the other one I had for you till then.

Hi N.P, lemmie have it!

Kewl, thanks NP!