Moby Dick Quotes

Quote 1: "Call me Ishmael." Chapter 1, pg. 1

Quote 2: "I turned in, and never slept better in my life." Chapter 3, pg. 21

Quote 3: "'Starboard gangway, there! side away to larboard- larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!'" Chapter 9, pg. 33

Quote 4: "Queequeg was a native of Kovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are." Chapter 12, pg. 46

Quote 5: "A noble craft, but somehow most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that." Chapter 16, pg. 58

Quote 6: "'He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales.'" Chapter 16, pg. 67

Quote 7: "Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous slavish shore?" Chapter 22, pg. 89

Quote 8: "For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth." Chapter 27, pg. 97

Quote 9: "More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile." Chapter 28, pg. 103

Quote 10: "'What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more-'" Chapter 30, pg. 107

Quote 11: "'Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales here-abouts! If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!'" Chapter 31, pg. 108

Quote 12: "But I now leave my Cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught- nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!" Chapter 32, pg. 120

Quote 13: "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!" Chapter 34, pg. 122

Quote 14: "'Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke- look you, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!'" Chapter 36, pg. 135

Quote 15: "'All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event- in the living act, the undoubted deed- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing put forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me.'" Chapter 36, pg. 136

Quote 16: "He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." Chapter 41, pg. 154-155

Quote 17: "And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?" Chapter 42, pg. 165

Quote 18: "The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course- its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events." Chapter 47, pg. 181

Quote 19: "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." Chapter 49, pg. 193

Quote 20: "'I don't know that, my little man; I never yet say him kneel.'" Chapter 50, pg. 194

Quote 21: "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 live long made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked." Chapter 51, pg. 197

Quote 22: "All men live enveloped in the 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." Chapter 60, pg. 239

Quote 23: "'Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint. 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.'" Chapter 64, pg. 250

Quote 24: "'O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!'" Chapter 70, pg. 264

Quote 25: "'Nay, keep it thyself,' cried Gabriel to Ahab; 'thou art soon going that way.'" Chapter 71, pg. 269

Quote 26: "Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow; while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's." Chapter 73, pg. 278

Quote 27: "And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, the delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing." Chapter 78, pg. 290

Quote 28: "The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen." Chapter 81, pg. 295

Quote 29: "But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy." Chapter 87, pg. 328

Quote 30: "What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?"Chapter 89, pg. 336

Quote 31: "The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul." Chapter 93, pg. 349

Quote 32: "Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when- There she blows!- the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again." Chapter 98, pg. 361

Quote 33: "'Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as a Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this block-head for a bone to stand on!'" Chapter 108, pg. 397

Quote 34: "'Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.'" Chapter 109, pg. 399

Quote 35: "'If thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer! Can'st not smoothe this seam?'" Chapter 113, pg. 408

Quote 36: "One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk away. In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride." Chapter 124, pg. 432

Quote 37: "Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze... But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul... the step-mother world, so long cruel- forbidding- now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. 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." Chapter 132, pg. 450

Quote 38: "'There she blows!- there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby-Dick!'" Chapter 133, pg. 454

Quote 39: "'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 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!'" Chapter 135, pg. 477