a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it
(it) was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that in most people’s estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly. re Queequeg’s use of a harpoon at the breakfast table
a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man…afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, …let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way.
Jonah’s Captain, Shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. 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.
(Queequeg’s home island) …is not down in any map; true places never are.
Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth from Stubb, second-mate
…fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising events, – as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi
A Bookwoman’s Holiday 