Top 57 Nathaniel Philbrick Quotes
#1. There was a saying on the island: "[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#2. After seventeen days, one of the crew suggested that they cast lots. As it turned out, the lot fell to the man who had originally made the proposal, and after lots were cast again to see who should execute him, he was killed and eaten.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#3. The great lesson I get from 'Moby-Dick' is that when the times are bad, when there is great foreboding, there are still ways to go about living. It's through Ishmael that I find a kind of overall cosmic approach to a meaningful life in this meaningless world.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#4. People think I live here on Nantucket and just gaze at the ocean, getting my inspiration. Not so. I work in my basement and gaze out onto a single window that shows me a cement wall. This is a profession, and it's important to have professionalism about the writing.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#5. Instead of being a page-turner, 'Moby-Dick' is a repository of American history and culture and the essentials of Western literature. The book is so encyclopedic that space aliens could use it to re-create the whale fishery as it once existed on the planet Earth in the midst of the 19th century.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#6. No matter how much the inhabitants might try to hide it, there was a savagery about this island, a bloodlust and pride that bound every mother, father, and child in a clannish commitment to the hunt.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#7. Soon after, Tom, all of twenty years old, became the only soldier in the Civil War to win two Medals of Honor. In
Nathaniel Philbrick
#8. As Herman Melville wrote of that seagoing monster of a man Captain Ahab, "All mortal greatness is but disease.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#9. 'Moby-Dick' has a remarkable way of resonating with whatever is going on in the world at that particular moment.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#10. I've always known that I had the happy facility of making enemies of any one I ever knew,
Nathaniel Philbrick
#12. As long as I can remember, I've been writing - first poems, then stories, and by my early teenage years I was also in love with sailing.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#13. If you live on Nantucket, you can't avoid its history, and 'Moby Dick' is the way most of us get into Nantucket's history.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#14. In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#15. Faint not, poor soul, in God still trust;
Fear not the things thou suffer must;
For, whom he loves he doth chastise,
And then all tears wipes from their eyes.
William Bradford
Plymouth Colony Governor
Nathaniel Philbrick
#16. A Puritan believed it was necessary to venture back to the absolute beginning of Christianity, before the church had been corrupted by centuries of laxity and abuse, to locate divine truth.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#17. When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn't have the courage to go. I was a tremendously shy person, almost pathologically shy. The thought of peers critiquing my work - oh, God.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#18. One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I'm writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#19. Whatever you read, there's no better place to read than the cockpit or the berth of a boat. It's kind of like being in a womb.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#20. Writing can't be too calculated. My best writing is when I set it aside, move on. It's not when I'm crafting a sentence, thinking about what word should follow another.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#21. This mortal life decays apace How soon the bubble's broke Adam and all his numerous race Are Vanity and Smoke.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#22. Something like going to get the newspaper can increase your writing efficiency by taking you away from the material. When I'm doing other things, writing stuff will be swirling around in my head, and sometimes I'll see a new way into the material.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#25. The act of self-expression - through writing a journal or letters - often enables a survivor to distance himself from his fears.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#28. Odd things happen in a battle, and the human heart has strange and gruesome depths and the human brain still stranger shallows;
Nathaniel Philbrick
#29. If half of the two thousand warriors fired ten arrows each during the engagement, that would have been a total of ten thousand arrows,
Nathaniel Philbrick
#30. Enthusiasm is big. When I write a book, it's a three-year commitment. Toward the end, I'm writing seven days a week, and it's exhausting but thrilling. The only hope is to have some real enthusiasm for the book ... Above all, you need some strong emotional or personal connection to your material.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#32. In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#34. fluidity of the sea, not the rigidity of irresistible law, characterizes human conduct, especially in the midst of a calamity.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#36. wishing thee a short and prosperous voyage, with a full portion of happiness we remain thy friends. In
Nathaniel Philbrick
#37. Faint heart never won fair lady," he wrote; "neither did it ever pursue and overtake an Indian village.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#39. A survival tale peels away the niceties and comforts of civilization. Suddenly, all the technology and education in the world means nothing. I think all of us wonder while reading a survival tale, 'What would I have done in this situation? Would I have made it?'
Nathaniel Philbrick
#40. Many of us came away from our youth thinking that the story of the Revolution was that the Americans were patriots fighting the oppressive British. It was kind of good versus evil, liberty versus tyranny. When you get into it, you find that it was much more complicated.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#41. I follow the Patriots, but the Steelers were my first and true love. I still have a 'Terrible Towel.'
Nathaniel Philbrick
#43. Paul Revere Jr., with whom I had lunch at Spanky's Clam Shack in Hyannis, Massachusetts.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#44. As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#47. I consider myself a writer who happens to write about history, rather than a historian. I was an English major in college. What I've learned about history is in the field, so to speak. Going into the archives and working with it directly.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#48. Chase's ability to adjust his manner of leadership to the needs of his men begs comparison to one of the greatest and most revered leaders of all time, Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#50. I watch a lot of bad TV. I spend my entire day reading and writing, and after dinner my idea of fun is just to watch a lot of bad TV. That's how I relax and stay in touch with modern culture.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#51. Melville's example demonstrates the wisdom of waiting to read the classics. Coming to a great book on your own after having accumulated essential life experience can make all the difference.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#52. For me, 'Moby-Dick' is more than the greatest American novel ever written; it is a metaphysical survival manual - the best guidebook there is for a literate man or woman facing an impenetrable unknown: the future of civilization in this storm-tossed 21st century.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#53. Martin Scorsese, everything he does, I've got to see. And Jack Nicholson, I've got to see what he does.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#54. The moment any of them gave up on the difficult work of living with their neighbors--and all of the compromise, frustration, and delay that inevitably entailed--they risked losing everything.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#55. the greatest danger to America's future came from self-serving opportunism masquerading as patriotism. At
Nathaniel Philbrick
#56. XTC is my favorite band; I'm a huge Neil Young fan, Jayhawks, all that type of stuff. I like Death Cab for Cutie, also Ryan Adams. I try to impress my children: 'Have you listened to such-and-such?' They're not impressed.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#57. You know, if you're at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points.
Nathaniel Philbrick
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