Barney Frank Quotes

Besides all those whaling details, Moby Dick is about someone who's looking for something so huge, something they've wanted all their life, yet they know when they find it, it will kill them.

Captain Ahab was a man possessed with an obsessional drive to pursue the white whale which had harmed him - which had torn his leg out - to the ends of the Earth, no matter what happened. In the final scene of the novel, Captain Ahab is being borne out to sea, wrapped around the white whale with the rope of his own harpoon and going obviously to his death. It was a scene of almost suicidal finality.

Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.

Self-will so ardent and active that it will break a world to pieces to make a stool to sit on.

If I don't get you now, I'll get you later.

Captain Ahab drowned, he reminded himself; it was the trimmer, Ishmael, who survived.

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;Round and round they sped.I was disturbed at this;I accosted the man."It is futile," I said,"You can never-""You lie," he cried,And ran on.

Batman. I like the idea that if I had enough money, time, and vengeance, I could become him.

I am quite obsessive by nature.

Are you following me?" she asks, but doesn't meet my gaze. "Yeah," I say. "Why?" I give her the only honest and true answer I have. "You're where I want to be.

I'm an indestructible master of war.

I'm hunger. I'm thirst. Where I bite, I hold till I die, and even after death they must cut out my mouthful from my enemy's body and bury it with me. I can fast a hundred years and not die. I can lie a hundred nights on the ice and not freeze. I can drink a river of blood and not burst. Show me your enemies.

Obession makes everything possible

I am a mountain goat that keeps going and going and going, I cannot be stopped, I just keep going.

I was obsessed. I wouldn't quit. My grades suffered. I didn't care.

I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.

There is a fine line between perseverance and madness.

A giddy feeling, in a way, except there was the dreamy edge of impossibility to it - like running a dead-end maze - no way out - it couldn't come to a happy conclusion and yet I was doing it anyway because it was all I could think of to do.

If you run from me, I will chase you, and I'll find you.

As if you could outrun me.

Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.

Passion, for me, is like a shark - it never stops moving.

When you're in the world looking for only one thing, you find it or it finds you. The obsession can be mutual

And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.

Anyone can dabble, but once you've made that commitment, your blood has that particular thing in it, and it's very hard for people to stop you.