Oh, Life!

Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,—as wild, untutored things are forced to feed—Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human
in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, ye blessed influences!  --Moby-Dick, Dusk

Oh, Life! thou unsought mystery, that springs from nothingness, to grasp at Eternity. Eternity! Awful shadow! incomprehensible Dread! On whose black threshold the spirit shrinks shuddering, — till Hope comes, — like the star in the east.

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, September 1852; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army 

Is anything so beautiful as unbounded faith?

"As full of unquestioning and unfaltering faith in him, the girl sat motionless and heard him out. Then silently rose, and turned her boundlessly confiding brow to him. He kissed it thrice, and without another syllable left the place."

-- Herman Melville, Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (1852). 

 

 C.— "Is anything so beautiful as unbounded faith?"

F.— "Listen! that's 'to horse.'"

C.— "Answer me then!"

F.— "Pshaw!—Of course it's beautiful; or rather, sublime."

C.— "It is the very attribute of human love!"

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger Volume 19, March 1853; and  

Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857 and 1859) page 387.