Moby-Dick

"And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth."

"Lo! ye believers in these sort of things, here is your Cetology!"

"From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."

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

"Strike through the mask! How and why the dramatic theatre shall yet enact unwritten chapters."

"For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books."

"Now small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity."

"The monkey-rope was fast to both of us; so that we were bound together as with a wedding-knot."

"I try the truth; I try all things, I achieve what I can; but I can only swear, not shout, my answer."

"Small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity."

"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."

"The Whale as he appears in the heavens, and in the Psalms, is as much as the symbol of the highest religious fervency."

"O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies!"

"Man's one only real comforter is his pipe."

"Here is a vital point; as out-jetting nose is to the bloodhound, so to the whale is his tail-flukes his principal organ of direction."

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme."

"We are turned round from shock; and we are all tomahawks and knives now."

"Some think the great Leviathan is from the days of Creation herself."

"All miserable air-breathing mortals live enveloped in whale-lines."

"The thing that moved my very soul to that mad intensity is as much a mystery to me as it is to you."

"Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?"

"Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!"

"God keep me!—Push not a demoniac further than he has gone, and give not winds his prayed curse."

"There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness."

"I feel cooped up and caged; fain would I stretch myself in free air and under a wide sky."

"Aye, aye, it was that accursed white whale that razed me."

"The same waves wash the moles of the Nile and the palaces of Versailles."

"I now leave my cetological system standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left with the crane still standing upon its top."

"There are some certain things that cast shadows back; that is, give out a shadow from an object whose back is to the sun."

"For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy."