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

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

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it.

Call me Ishmael.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke