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She Who Quotes Moby Dick

@helenhv.bsky.social
331 followers 114 following 1.3K posts

*Quoting_Moby Dick_ from start to finish!* Writer, thesaurus-reader, lover of bees and plants (she/her) #WritingBarn #SCBWI #kidlit #amquerying #mobydick

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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 18h
...he smoked them all out in succession lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers [sic], he put his pipe into his mouth.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 18h
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he... #ClassicBooks #Duality #AllGenres
Two book covers side-by-side: One is a battered paperback copy of Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and the other is a library copy of Game Changer by Rachel Reid.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
...about that almost impious good-humor of his; that thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Today's #MobyDicj quote 🧵: What, perhaps with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world full of grave peddlers, all bowed to the ground with their packs; what helped to bring... #HomeDecor #peacock #bird #ClassicBooks
Peacock feather sticking out of the head of a white ceramic salt shaker in the shape of a bird.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
...no doubt like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestie themselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
...exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner,...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most... #ClassicBooks #LuluThePiggie #Halloween
Lulu the Piggie figurine wearing a homemade monster costume and carting a homemade pumpkin-shaped bag. The costume is bright green, with purple horns and white teeth.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It looks like it! It's growing in the neighbourhood but had no idea what it was called. What a fantastic name; I actually thought you were joking at first!
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
... invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
...an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and all his crew...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: CHAPTER 27 Knights and Squires Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with... 🌱 #Lips #ClassicBooks #HermanMelville
Focus on a vine leaf that's shaped like a luscious pair of lips, with a cluster of crimson red berries sprouting from the centre.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
...the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
...over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
...times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most based, among them all, shall at... #StreetArt #mural #monster #ClassicBooks
A street art mural of a cute, green monster with big eyes and pointy teeth. Live vines dangle in front of the monster face.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
...robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The center and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no... #ClassicBooks #sunrise #ocean #landscape
Gorgeous, grey ocean with an orange sunrise.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
...all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
...of valor in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall... #Frenchie #FrenchBulldog #DogSky #ClassicBooks
A white French bulldog with a red collar, sitting in a city alleyway.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
...spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
...brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the conflict with the seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more ...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
...that a man so organized, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up. And...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But it was not in reasonable nature... #puns #ClassicBooks #silly
Handmade, rainbow-painted bookmark with pun stickers on it. The stickers are:
A whale and the words: Whale done!
An anthropomorphic grilled cheese and the words: So grilled to see you!
A snail and the words: Sailed it!
Anthropomorphic potato and tortilla chips and the words: Friend-chip goals
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
...here in this critical ocean to kill fish for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father's? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
... courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling,... #LuluThePiggie #ClassicBooks #cute
Fuzzy figurine of a pig wearing a purple owl costume. The figurine is Lulu the Piggie.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
...any other whale hunter.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
...fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. "Aye, aye," said Stubb, the second mate, "Starbuck, there, is as careful a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery." But we shall ere long see what that word "careful" precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: "I will have no man iny boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly... 🌱 #bee #BugSky
Top-down view of a bumblebee sleeping in a purple flower.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
...honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
... were his. And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more did his faraway domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
...a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with... #JewelWeed 🌱 #seed #SlowMo #ClassicBooks
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
...through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
...to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages... #banana #ClassicBooks #HermanMelville
Top-down view inside a bin of yellow banana candies. There is a metal scoop on top of the clear plastic cover.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
...summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
...flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: CHAPTER 26 Knights and Squires The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his... #StreetArt #Montreal #ClassicBooks
An outdoor mural showing a person in a fantastic wood rabbit mask. The mask has three eyes, carved marks, and pink flowers. The person wearing the mask has symbolic tattoos and earrings that seem, to this viewer, Mayan/Aztec.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
...it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils? Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor Macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can... #frenchie #FrenchBulldog #dog #ClassicBooks
A French bulldog looks through the split in a sliding glass door. The dog is white with black spots.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
...and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly... #BugSky 🌱 #bee #ClassicBooks
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
...a caster of state. How they use the salt, precisely —who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad.
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
... eloquently upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy? It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Today's #MobyDick quote 🧵: CHAPTER 25 Postscript In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not-unreasonable surmise, which might tell... #sunshine #shadow #zen #ClassicBooks
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
... executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. [MSS=manuscript]
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
... undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my...
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She Who Quotes Moby Dick @helenhv.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
...take it off to Queequeg! No more! I know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I count that man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns. And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet...
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