"Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers."

"For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape."

"Yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings."

"And had you watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring. While his one...

"I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with...

"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...

"There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol...

"With my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads."

"For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their...

"The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness."

"To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order."

"I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense."

"The Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in,...

"So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain...

"But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual celebrity [. . .] but he [Moby Dick] was admitted into all the...

"God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; [. . .] a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the...

"The mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul."

"Ah God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire? He sleeps with clenched...

"Seems it not a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of...

"Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul."