Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 22 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

Maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that corroded in him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Down, men! the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

As if the particular place of the last encounter had been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily swimming forward… He seemed swimming with his utmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight path in the sea.

“Oh! Ahab,” cried Starbuck, “not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

And at last when Ahab was sliding by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck's face as he leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats which had but just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in repairing them. One after the other, through the portholes, as he sped, he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all this; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving a nail into his heart. But he rallied.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Whether fagged by the three days' running chase, and the resistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White Whale's way now began to abate...
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance -- as the whale sometimes will -- and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled round his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I turn my body from the sun.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! 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.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. “The ship? Great God, where is the ship?” Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale