Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the ope… - Herman Melville

all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea

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!

Patriotism is not baseness, neither is it inhumanity.

For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril; — nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.