Captain Ahab

"I try all things, I achieve what I can; therefore I am content."

"This is my living arm, and this is my living self."

"Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Cape of Good Hope, and round by the Norway Maelstrom, and round by the mouth of the Bellstraight, and round by the instant Pole, and round and round the world, and still chase him."

"Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing that kicked me with all the cruel violence of a horse!"

"He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength."

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it."

"The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run."

"I am bound to that whale by cords wove of my very life-line."

"If man will strike, strike through the mask!"

"I will have the first one for luck."

"Ye see an old man cut down to his gristle."

"Ye understand therefore that my oath hath been a covenant with ye ere this."

"This iron bonds all round; that is, if ye be all ready to chop that bond."

"Now, then, hear me! That which came to me in a dream, I live to fulfil."

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it."

"Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance."

"I am the captain of my soul."

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee."

"I stand alone upon this deck, not as a ship's captain commands, but as the Fates ordain."

"To know all is to forgive all, but I am neither knowing nor forgiving."

"I see in him outrageous strength with an inscrutable malice sinewing it."

"As a mortal man, I am bound by mortal laws, but as captain, I answer only to God."

"I have crossed oceans of time to find this one white whale."

"I feel as a billow that's all one crested comb, Starbuck!"

"To hunt the white whale is to hunt the very essence of the infinite."

"What is the world but a stage for ambition and vengeance?"

"It is the whiteness of the whale that wrings me."

"To be enraged with you for having observed Moby Dick, that accursed white whale, is as if to rage with a dumb brute that kicked you."

"Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Cape of Good Hope, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up."

"Prophecies are all fulfilled ere men can compass them."