“It is a truth universally acknowledged, he’d mused, that most people will never find their ‘call me Ishmael’.”

“But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.”

“And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell.”

“In school I ended up writing three different papers on "The Castaway" section of Moby-Dick, the chapter where the cabin boy Pip falls overboard and is driven mad by the empty immensity of what he f...”

“No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves it is the woman only who can make it a torment. ”

“What on earth did you say to Isola? She stopped in on her way to pick up Pride and Prejudice and to berate me for never telling her about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Why hadn't she known there ...”

“Maria was married on Saturday. In all important preparations of mind she was complete, being prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home, by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the...”