Moby-Dick

"I never ask a favor unless I can convert it into a duty."

"The act is immoral; be the agent who he may."

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul."

"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race."

"This is my living act, and not a death."

"He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength with an inscrutable malice sinewing it."

"Meditation and water are wedded for ever."

"The Nantucket mariner is quick to perceive a fraternity as old as ourselves."

"I am bound to that pagan by cords woven of my very heartstrings."

"The great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last."

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

"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."

"Call me Ishmael."

"There is a certain majesty about misery."

"I try the lost child within; and that string that I felt, I feel again."

"The helm! the helm! take the helm!"

"Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who?"

"The Parsee—the Parsee!"

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

"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it."

"Nor is it any advantage that for the most this earthly chase is attended by such a melancholy."

"Strike through the mask!"

"I own thy speechless, placid eye."

"I stand alone here upon an open sea."

"The whole act is immutably decreed. It was rehearsed by thee and me a billion times."

"This whole act is immutably decreed."

"Would that I could find the last man to murder, and once and for all settle things."

"Aye, aye! it must be so. I am the madman that strives against the gods themselves."

"By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone."

"He tasks me; he heaps me."