Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 18 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

“Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors now as if they were never going to be used again.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Lord, Lord, that the winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty night, lad.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as they stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, upright man; but out of Starbuck's heart, at that instant when he saw the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for itself.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and doom,--that's fair for Moby Dick.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scornest.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together? -- And would I be a murderer, then, if” -- and slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket's end against the door.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The wind has gone down and shifted, Sir; the fore and main topsails are reefed and set; she heads her course.”

“Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!”

Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's tormented sleep, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream to speak.

The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel; Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.

“He's too sound asleep, Mr Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know'st what to say.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“To him nothing's happened; but to me, the skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

He had not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard -- a cry and a rushing -- and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out for the White Whale, on the White Whale's own peculiar ground; that man was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the time.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to be.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Thou art as unprincipled as the gods.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Faith, Sir, I've -- ”

“Faith? What's that?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale