Moby Dick

I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death.

But this is not the half; look again.

Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics

through that gate lay the route to his vengeance

I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny

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

in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body

true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them

That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp

The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned before him; in obedience to his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to a god.

I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny that the Sperm Whale has any other brain than that palpable semblance of one formed by the cubic-yards of his sperm magazine.

We have thee there.

“Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow.

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

“I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.”

To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot.

there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom

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

no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madly cursed

he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more than he can one exactly astern

murderers still sailed on

at last he loses his identity

Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating?

a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it

a rather good sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs

We work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask the why and wherefore of our work

keep a bright look-out

I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible.

upon first cutting into him with the spade, the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh

the audacity of these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed