Moby Dick

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whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am
convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as
Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes
up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep
thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the
curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw reflected there,
a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my
head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought,
after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon;
this seems an additional argument for the above supposition.

And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to
behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild
head overhung by a canopy of vapour, engendered by his incommunicable
contemplations, and that vapour--as you will sometimes see it--glorified
by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts.
For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate