Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

All this struck me as mighty singular; yet upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it.

 

[Old Thunder]

Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn that is -- which was the only way he could get there -- thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself.

 

[Old Thunder]

Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that.

 

[Old Thunder]

But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving.

 

[Old Thunder]

So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspetic old woman, he must have "broken his digester."

 

[Old Thunder]

As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings.

 

[Old Thunder]

I felt a melting in me.

 

[Old Thunder]

No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world.

 

[Old Thunder]

This soothing savage had redeemed it.

 

[Old Thunder]

There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilised hypocrisies and bland deceits.