Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 17 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

“Where is Moby Dick?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teter over to a seething sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there's that in here that still remains indifferent.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck, “look at thy boat, old man!”

Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire, remained firmly lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat's bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpent's tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm--“God, God is against thee, old man; forbear! t'is an ill voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”

Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the braces--though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast mate's thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:--

“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out the last fear!” And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the flame.

As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab's many of the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Didn't you once say that whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something extra on its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I've part changed my flesh since that time, why not my mind?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Why don't ye be sensible, Flask? it's easy to be sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible.”

“I don't know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale