1. “Ignorance is the parent of fear.”
2. “Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes”
3. “in coat, heart, body, and brain;”
4. “For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men”
5. “All mortal greatness is but disease.”
6. “…to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
7. “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”
8. “I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world.”
9. “there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.”
10. “Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!”
11. “As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
12. “There is an aesthetics in all things.”
13. “…and Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”
14. “So with stun-sail piled on stun-sail, we sailed along,”
15. “Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”
16. “Truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.”
17. “Yet he is but a mask. ‘Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung.”
18. “So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and to be spent in that way.”
19. “Birds — the birds — He rises.”
20. “How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished there?”
21. “There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.”
22. “I have, lad, I have. At sea one day, you’ll smell land where there’ll be no land, and on that day Ahab will go to his grave, but he’ll rise again within the hour. He will rise and beckon. Then all; all save one shall follow. (Slinking away with a smile on his face) Mornin’, lads — mornin. May the heavens bless you.”
23. “I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick. “Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?” he roared. “Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don’t ye spring, I say, all of ye—spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!” And so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his leg very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day.”
24. “Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.”
25. “Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him.”
26. “The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say.”
27. “You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned.”
28. “Call me Ishmael.”
29. “his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad.”
30. “It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.”
31. “What he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him.”
32. “There is all the different in the world between paying and being paid.”
33. “I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
34. “Of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are the most apt to get out of order.”
35. “Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.”
36. “Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the devil fetch the hindmost.”
37. “He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds.”
38. “Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery.”
39. “Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb.”
40. “nameless miseries of the numberless mortals”
41. “My body is but the lees of my better being.”
42. “The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. What”
43. “Aw, come on, Mr. Starbuck, you’re just plain gloomy. Moby Dick may be big, but he ain’t THAT big.”
44. “Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.”
45. “and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned.”
46. “street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
47. “It is our task in life to kill whales, to furnish oil for the lamps of the world. If we perform that task well and faithfully, we do a service to mankind that pleases Almighty God. Ahab would deny all that. He has taken us from the rich harvest we were reaping to satisfy his lust for vengeance. He is twisting that which is holy into something dark and purposeless. He is a Champion of Darkness. Ahab’s red flag challenges the heavens.”
48. “Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also. But when a man’s religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.”
49. “Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.”
50. “For there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.”
51. “But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself.”
52. “Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.”
53. “Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington.”
54. “God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart forever; the vulture the very creature he creates.”
55. “Hast seen the white whale?”
56. “For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.”
57. “a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.”
58. “Captain Gardner, I seek the white whale, your own son’s murderer. I am losing time — Goodbye, and fare thee well, I say. God help you, Captain Gardiner.”
59. “Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”
60. “The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.”
61. “There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”
62. “Speak not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. Look ye, Starbuck, all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The white whale tasks me; he heaps me.”
63. “Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan.”
64. “As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors.”
65. “Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.”
66. “I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.”
67. “I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass. ”
68. “But war is pain, and hate is woe.”
69. “But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.”
70. “and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore.”
71. “there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.”
72. “Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn’t stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there.”
73. “Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him carefully, I’m quite certain that he’s no more fit to command a whale-ship than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he’s a baboon.”
74. “The great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last.”
75. “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”
76. “Even though white is often associated with things, that are pleasant and pure, there is a peculiar emptiness about the color white. It is the emptiness of the white that is more disturbing, than even the bloodiness of red.”
77. “I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.”
78. “I believe that much of a man’s character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.”
79. “No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don’t know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping.”
80. “Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic sign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere those things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.”
81. “It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.”
82. “yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.”
83. “In fact, tell him I’ve diddled him, and perhaps somebody else.”
84. “Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer”
85. “Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.”
86. “O Father, mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s. Yet this is nothing. I leave eternity to Thee. For what is man, that he should live out the lifetime of his God?”
87. “Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life.”
88. “when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick.”
89. “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.”
90. “It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”
91. “You might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelegence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or instinct, or simply because he had been tuitored into it, or by any intermixture of all of these , even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb , sponteneous literal process.”
92. “I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.”
93. “I try all things, I achieve what I can.”
94. “Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s face.”
95. “All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”
96. “Slowly it floats more and more away,”
97. “content with his own companionship;”
98. “Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.”
99. “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!”
100. “A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.”
101. “Toes are rare in blubber-room veterans”.”
102. “I’ll tell you what to do so as not to spoil it by overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live coal to it with the other; that done, dish it; d’ye hear?”
103. “Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”
104. “I am past scorching; not easily canst thou scorch a scar.”
105. “He did not feel the wind, or smell the salt air. He only stood, staring at the horizon, with the marks of some inner crucifixion and woe deep in his face.”
106. “Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”
107. “To be enraged with a dumb brute that acted out of blind instinct is blasphemous.”
108. “All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
109. “I’ll follow him around the Horn, and around the Norway maelstrom, and around perdition’s flames before I give him up.”
110. “Doesn’t the devil live forever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see any person wearing mourning for the devil?”
111. “It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea.”
112. “To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.”
113. “So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.”
114. “Madman! Look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.”
115. “A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk.”
116. “It is an evil voyage, I tell thee. If Ahab has his way, neither thee nor me, nor any member of this ship’s company will ever see home again.”
117. “Ahab and aguish lay stretched together in one hammock.”
118. “because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.”
119. “And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.”
120. “But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.”
121. “That ain’t no whale; that a great white god.”
122. “it is better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one.”
123. “Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it.”
124. “There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”
125. “A short life to them, and a jolly death.”
126. “and tell him to paint me a sign, with-“no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;” might as well kill both birds at once.”
127. “It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
128. “Oh! thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!”
129. “Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure….. Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle , and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?.”
130. “It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.”
131. “That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man.”
132. “Well, sir, if it’s like that, I don’t wonder that you, a religious man, might be a bit downcast. But I don’t much see what you can do about it.”
133. “See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.”
134. “For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.”
135. “and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man’s religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.”
136. “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.”
137. “From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.”
138. “Of erections how few are domed like St. Peter’s! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!”
139. “It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.”
140. “In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.”
141. “And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, it’s better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one.”
142. “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale.”
143. “Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire.”
144. “There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.”
145. “For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.”
146. “However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and to be spent in that way.”
147. “Tell him to paint me a sign, with-“no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;” might as well kill both birds at once.”
148. “Sleep? That bed is a coffin, and those are winding sheets. I do not sleep, I die.”
149. “Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”
150. “Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them! “Why”
151. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.”
152. “Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”
153. “By heaven’s man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and fate is the handspike.”
154. “It rolls the mid-most waters of the world, the Indian Ocean and Atlantic being just its arms.”
155. “There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath…”
