Moby Dick

Accursed fate! that the unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!

It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

go down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself

you find some of these Nantucketers who have a genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb; comprising the tapering extremity of the body

I know not that it has been defined before.

unflinching earnestness

being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence

Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy.

far too rich to supply a substitute for butter

the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from the smitten hull

it is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social

And if you cannot kill them all at once, you must wing them, so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure.

that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives

God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee

the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea

we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff

relinquish this turbulence

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.

fatal to the last degree of fatality; those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick

I heard Ahab mutter, ‘Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine; swears that I must play them, and no others.’

In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.

She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies.

Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate sounds from out ravines

he is in a prodigious commotion, the water cascading all around him

Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs

even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar

Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went?

a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress

magical

God! God! God!—crack my heart!—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs