Dead Reckoning in Literature
In Walden, Henry David Thoreau suggests the following approach to life:
"In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds."
In Moby Dick, or, The Whale, Herman Melville states on page 507: "...and in these same perilous seas, gropes he not his way by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding log?"
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Famous quotes containing the words dead, reckoning and/or literature:
“If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Goodness shall be repaid with goodness, and evil repaid with evil; never fear; the day of reckoning will come soon.”
—Chinese proverb.
“How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)