Moby-Dick

"The great Ketos or Whale, as a distinct species of the leviathan, is by all odds the most formidable of all whales to encounter at sea."

"Queequeg died as became a man: with his face to the light."

"There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast."

"How small are all earthly concretes to the infinite!"

"The silent, subtle, ever-present persuasion of the sea; its vastness overwhelms all thought of motive or record."

"In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here."

"And some certain significance lurks in all things, or this one thing is not worth the telling."

"I now recalled all the circumstances connected with the Japanese plague, and the advice of the captain."

"He knows a fragrant thing when he smells it."

"The try-works were full of fire and boiling oil, in which the whiteness and blackness of the whale were vaporizing."

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke."

"It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life."

"Meditation and water are wedded for ever."

"I would strike the sun if it insulted me."

"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."

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

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

"What is the will and the word of the captain is the will and the word of God?"

"There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod."

"To be enraged with you for daring to assume that I am in any degree mad."

"I am bound to that unchangeable prescript which has fixed my lodge in unalterable sorrows."

"All evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick."

"Man's v-way is paved with bricks of his own baking."

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

"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse."

"This book is the Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges."

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

"For there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men."

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

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