Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.
Interpretation
Life is a journey that ultimately leads us back to our true selves and values.
Herman Melville's quote suggests that life is comparable to a voyage, where every experience and lesson moves us closer to understanding our true essence and purpose. The phrase 'homeward bound' signifies that, despite the distractions and challenges we encounter during our journey, the ultimate destination is a profound connection to our origins, identity, and values.
In practice
Using this quote in a graduation speech to emphasize the journey of life students are embarking on.
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
Pools of sorrow. Waves of joy.
When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.
We’d turn our lives into a terrible adventure. A true-life horror story with a happy ending. A trial we’d survive to talk about.
An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.
I am busier now than I ever imagined I would be, but I feel blessed in that I have found what I am supposed to be doing with my life. It's wonderful to tell stories and have people listen to them.
We have this habit of romanticizing the lives of writers. I remember when I was a kid, I was like, 'I want to be Kurt Vonnegut.'
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.