For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain signifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heart woes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an arch angelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogeniture of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft-cymbal ling, round harvest-moons, we must need give in to this: that the gods themselves are not forever glad. The ineffable, sad birthmark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.

Moby-Dick or