The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run - Herman Melville

oaths and anchors equally will drag: naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and along these fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

...then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.