Moby Dick

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it

Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.

you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning

there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men

I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.

I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny

They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.

Yet this is life.

For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth.

Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity.” ALL.

we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita

a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off

in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale

The dead, blind wall butts all inquiring heads at last.

Leap! leap up, and lick the sky!

And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?

you might almost stand in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely

a score of voices from all parts of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the accustomed cry

The French are the lads for painting action.

in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body

true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them

no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none

And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb

tormented to madness, he was now churning through the water, violently flailing with his flexible tail

The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I

Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.

all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still

Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!

the beheading of the Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale surgeons very much pride themselves

It is a German conceit, that the vertebræ are absolutely undeveloped skulls.

we occasionally hear of English and American vessels, which, in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged

I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it—half steeped in dreams—I opened my eyes

You must go home and be born over again; you don’t know how to cook a whale-steak yet.

down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws

we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon were sleeping

Curses throttle thee!

I know not

It never wriggles.

with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey

But this is not the half; look again.

through that gate lay the route to his vengeance

his mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to dance him again

That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp

Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics

I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death.

the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went down

some idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that

they went to the captain and told him if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of them would remain

when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head

It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times,and tides