The offshore truth

Glimpses do you seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God -- so, bitter is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!

-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick