1 A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid.
2 As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work every way of uncommon value.
3 Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters.
4 With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.
5 It is by endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that some departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate.
6 For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, 'that he paid the fare thereof' ere the craft did sail.
7 During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers.
8 Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless power of deceiving and bedevilling so many others.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam's Story. 9 Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island; and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it.
10 Besides, this idea of Jonah's weathering the Cape of Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the honour of the discovery of that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and so make modern history a liar.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded. 11 That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish. 12 Here is a vital point; for you must either satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.
13 No one having previously heard his history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he had led.
14 Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years.
15 Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that when narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold enormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses, when he wrote the history of the plagues of Egypt.