Moby Dick Quotes

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul.

By heavens, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.

Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.

For all his tattooings, he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays.

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.

In the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale.

In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

The whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of his tail.

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert.

Moby Dick Quotes part 2

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.

In that wild-whaling scene, upon the gusty maternal mountain-top, Moby Dick would rise again.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard.

What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish?

There’s a most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference!

But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

It seemed eternal, like the everlasting hills.

He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them.

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

The rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul.

A new chapter opens in this man’s life — Behold him, then, bent, as it were, over the foot of a precipice, searching and seeking into its awful abysses.

Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

Only one thing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reached within — through — and then, without — the rays of steel; dragged in the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice sundering the rope near the chocks, dropped the intercepted fagot of steel into the sea.

The devil fetch that harpooneer! uttered Stubb, in his boat’s bow.

It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies.

Locked up in his coffin, coffin?—Nonsense; he’s alive, I tell you; he must be!

What’s the use of going a thousand miles distant to see a whale, when you can better the advantages at home?

The whaleman may be said to pass through all the intermediate gradations of human life, from the untutored Tahitian or Feejeean, up to the Harvard man.

Some six handfuls were obtained; but more was unavoidably lost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been secured were it not for impatient Ahab’s loud command to Stubb to desist, and come on board, else the ship would bid them good bye.

Foolish, as it may seem, but in case of stranded whales, it is deemed best to keep the boat still further off from them.

Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues — north, east, south, and west.

Oh! trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh! high aspiring, rainbowed jet! — that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain!

For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale’s aspect, and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed horizontally swooping upon them.

Here are your wages. Brutishness is not gallantry.

It is best to learn wisdom by the experience of others.

I take it, that this part of the bill must have run something like this: Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.

Of what precise species this sea monster was, is not mentioned.

Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there.

Again, in Luke, xxii. 48, it is written:

The ship, however, was by no means a large one: a Russian craft built like a watch.

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man’s oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out.

It did not disappear, after the boat had been refreshed; but was luridly visible, as though it would be visible, whether or no.

It was hard upon high noon; and Ahab, seated in the bows of his high-hoisted boat, was about taking his wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his exact latitude. Game?—the white whale—tremendous!—a white whale—wanton eyes—mariner, come forward!—d’ye see him?—sing out for every spout, though he spout ten times a second!