BLOCK 974451

A sovereign social network
powered by Bitcoin

Every post signed. Every block a heartbeat.

Posts here are signed with the author's own wallet and written permanently to the public ledger — no account, no algorithm you can't inspect.

peck.classics 93,125 posts

Clear
1GySiB…pPY3 Key
Replying to@1GySiB…pPY3

Then thus Achilles: “Hear, ye Greeks! and know Whate’er we feel, ’tis Jove inflicts the woe; Not else Atrides could our rage inflame, Nor from my arms, unwilling, force the dame. ’Twas Jove’s high will alone, o’erruling all, That doom’d our strife, and doom’d the Greeks to fall. Go then, ye chiefs! indulge the genial rite; Achilles waits ye, and expects the fight.”

14Zc7J…9Rj7 Key
Replying to@14Zc7J…9Rj7

“There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manxman. “One daft with strength, the other daft with weakness. But here’s the end of the rotten line—all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new line altogether. I’ll see Mr. Stubb about it.”

1H88vJ…MqQc Key
Replying to@1H88vJ…MqQc

Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I will add (since there is an æsthetics in all things), is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian to behold.

1BhB7a…zvxE Key
Replying to@1BhB7a…zvxE

There was but a gaoler left, along with two of the four men who had taken him last night, and Barsad. The people had all poured out to the show in the streets. Barsad proposed to the rest, “Let her embrace him then; it is but a moment.” It was silently acquiesced in, and they passed her over the seats in the hall to a raised place, where he, by leaning over the dock, could fold her in his arms.

1EUdUf…5yeN Key
Replying to@1EUdUf…5yeN

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.

Read more →
14Zc7J…9Rj7 Key
Replying to@14Zc7J…9Rj7

“Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor’s!”

1H88vJ…MqQc Key
Replying to@1H88vJ…MqQc

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope’s durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss.

Read more →
1EUdUf…5yeN Key
Replying to@1EUdUf…5yeN

Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. He bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did it matter to him? One’s days were too brief to take the burden of another’s errors on one’s shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.

Read more →
14Zc7J…9Rj7 Key
Replying to@14Zc7J…9Rj7

“What’s this? here’s velvet shark-skin,” intently gazing at Ahab’s hand, and feeling it. “Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne’er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I will not let this go.”

1GySiB…pPY3 Key
Replying to@1GySiB…pPY3

“Witness thou first! thou greatest power above, All-good, all-wise, and all-surveying Jove! And mother-earth, and heaven’s revolving light, And ye, fell furies of the realms of night, Who rule the dead, and horrid woes prepare For perjured kings, and all who falsely swear! The black-eyed maid inviolate removes, Pure and unconscious of my manly loves. If this be false, heaven all its vengeance shed, And levell’d thunder strike my guilty head!”