Moby Dick

Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending

I don’t know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping.

they all glowed

according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours

I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass.

not the most exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is

the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul

the proper time comes

Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that.

the measureless crush and crash of the sperm whale's ponderous flukes

Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it.

Wish, by gor! whale eat him, ’stead of him eat whale. I’m bressed if he ain’t more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself

the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into its eternal blue noon

sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried

Consider the subtleness of the sea

random allusions to whales

the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep

down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws

tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness

for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!

pull down and pulverize that subaltern’s tower, and make a little heap of dust of it

nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer

they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation

This vigilance was not long without reward.

how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow?

What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck?

All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath me here

nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men

Nevertheless

But this is not all.