"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own."
Musing; Here is Ishmael in full voice. The men on board The Pequod have just come back from trying to catch a whale. There was a bit of a scare and Ishmael was knocked out of the boat. When given time to ponder life, Ishmael is a philosopher. I don't know if anyone else has ever felt this way before - on or off a boat - but surely the situations life throws at us seem, at times, part of a grand comical scene where the gods are lounging about laughing their heads off at us.