Old age is always wakeful as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. – Herman Melville
Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden – what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear! – Herman Melville
A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty. – Herman Melville
The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head – Herman Melville
And to my thinking as a lover of life, butterflies, soap-bubbles, and whatever is of their kind among men, know most of happiness. To see these light, foolish, delicate, mobile little souls flitting about—that moveth Zarathustra to tears and to song. – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), “Of Reading and Writing,” Thus Spake Zarathus