melville posting

Not mere sounds of common words, but inmost tones of my heart’s deepest melodies should now be audible to thee. Thou speakest to a human thing, but something heavenly should answer thee;—some flute heard in the air should answer thee; for sure thy most undreamed-of accents, Pierre, sure they have not been unheard on high. Blessings that are imageless to all mortal fancyings, these shall be thine for this.

—Pierre (Isabel speaking to Pierre)

But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's.

—the same letter

Therefore, forever unsistered for him by the stroke of Fate, and apparently forever, and twice removed from the remotest possibility of that love which had drawn him to his Lucy; yet still the object of the ardentest and deepest emotions of his soul; therefore, to him, Isabel wholly soared out of the realms of mortalness, and for him became transfigured in the highest heaven of uncorrupted Love.

—Pierre (after Pierre has determined not to pry into Isabel's mystery, and did not "feel a pang at this")

This is a long letter, but you are not at all bound to answer it. Possibly, if you do answer it, and direct it to Herman Melville, you will missend it—for the very fingers that now guide this pen are not precisely the same that just took it up and put it on this paper. Lord, when shall we be done changing? Ah! it's a long stage, and no inn in sight, and night coming, and the body cold. But with you for a passenger, I am content and can be happy. I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality.

—the same letter

Oh, my dear brother—Pierre! Pierre!—could’st thou take out my heart, and look at it in thy hand, then thou would’st find it all over written, this way and that, and crossed again, and yet again, with continual lines of longings, that found no end but in suddenly calling thee.

—Pierre (Isabel speaking to Pierre about how she came to write to him)

I should have a paper-mill established at one end of the house, and so have an endless riband of foolscap rolling in upon my desk; and upon that endless riband I should write a thousand—a million—billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you.

Moby-Dick

EPILOGUE. "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." Job. The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck.

Hamlet

But let it be.—Horatio, I am dead; Thou liv'st; report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied. Hor. Never believe it; I am more an antique Roman than a Dane, Here’s yet some liquor left. Ham.  As thou ’rt a man,— Give me the cup; let go; by Heaven, I’ll have it.— O God!—Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story.— [March afar off, and shot within.

Moby-Dick