Moby-Dick

"The masthead was our paradise; the whale our serpent."

"Aye, aye! and that sort of watery world we live in."

"I am the Ape that prances on the platform of the world."

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale."

"To be enraged with you is as bad as it is good to be friends with you."

"Oh, the rare old Whale, mid all the hurry and clamor of the world here, I stand alone in the moonlight."

"This wild air we breathe is the most delightful thing we can feel."

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

"A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."

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

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

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

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

"Call me Ishmael."

"He sought to strike through the mask, and strike through the wall, to reach the malicious agent beyond."

"Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea is this—the first keeps his mercury in the glass and carefully charts his course; the latter steers by what he sees above water."

"That monomaniac Ahab sailed on by night and day; and through the clear sunshine and through the billowed gloom of his dreams, aye, and through the death of two ships."

"It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me."

"I see, I see again, the same magnet draws me the same way."

"But I am bound; I am chained to the whale!"

"What one sees vaguely in a far distance may shape itself all differently when approached."

"Therefore, as Ixion was bound to his burning wheel, so am I bound to my purpose."

"The Pequod's crew were all islanders; every one, all, without exception."

"She was a ship of the old school, rather small if anything; a Norwegian built and Japanese rigged affair."

"A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy!"

"Who reads the most is he that speaks the least of what he reads."

"Thus have I sailed the world, as a ship sails the sea, without ever touching shore."

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

"One more gripe of thine, thou grinning whale! That is the last grasp of my soul's agony."

"I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb."