Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 19 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

“So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Hast seen the White Whale?”

“Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without the least quivering of his own.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“For this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Weep so, and I will murder thee!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Let's try the door. What? neither lock, nor bolt, nor bar; and yet there's no opening it.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“But here I'll stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and they bulge through; and oysters come to join me.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

All his successive meetings with various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned against.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

There lurked a something in the old man's eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

All their bodings, doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of Ahab's iron soul.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being's body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber, or go below. He would stand still for hours: but never sat or leaned.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Else they saw him standing in the cabin-scuttle, -- his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step; his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however motionless he stood, however the days and nights were added on, that he had not swung in his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they could never tell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at times; or whether he was still intently scanning them; no matter, though he stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The clothes that the night had wet, the next day's sunshine dried upon him; and so, day after day, and night after night; he went no more beneath the planks; whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

But if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from verbally expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint them.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Another ship, most miserably misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.

Upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.

“Hast seen the White Whale?”

“Look!” replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.

“Hast killed him?”

“The harpoon is not yet forged that will ever do that,” answered the other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.

“Not forged!” and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch, Ahab held it out, exclaiming -- “Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin, where the white whale most feels his accursed life!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

He seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“For forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“For forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare... when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Crack my heart! -- stave my brain!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to dance him again.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Is Ahab, Ahab?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale