Moby Dick Quotes

“I try all things, I achieve what I can.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath...”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant, I act under orders.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Shakespeare wrote Moby-Dick, using Melville as a Ouija board.”
― Ray Bradbury

“But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“The heroic and often tragic stories of American whalemen were renowned. They sailed the world’s oceans and brought back tales filled with bravery, perseverance, endurance, and survival. They mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, sang, spun yarns, scrimshawed, and recorded their musings and observations in journals and letters. They survived boredom, backbreaking work, tempestuous seas, floggings, pirates, putrid food, and unimaginable cold. Enemies preyed on them in times of war, and competitors envied them in times of peace. Many whalemen died from violent encounters with whales and from terrible miscalculations about the unforgiving nature of nature itself. And through it all, whalemen, those “iron men in wooden boats” created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories that can still stir our emotions and animate the most primal part of our imaginations. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme,” proclaimed Herman Melville, and the epic story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history.”
― Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

“in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.”
― Herman Melville

“American whale oil lit the world. It was used in the production of soap, textiles, leather, paints, and varnishes, and it lubricated the tools and machines that drove the Industrial Revolution. The baleen cut from the mouths of whales shaped the course of feminine fashion by putting the hoop in hooped skirts and giving form to stomachtightening
and chest-crushing corsets. Spermaceti, the waxy substance from the heads of sperm whales, produced the brightest- and cleanest-burning candles the world has ever known, while ambergris, a byproduct of irritation in a sperm whale’s bowel, gave perfumes great staying power and was worth its weight in gold.”
― Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

“And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phædon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed...”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Dear Duncan, You color with me, but why? Most of the time I’m the same color as the page you are using me on –WHITE. If I didn’t have a black outline, you wouldn’t even know I was THERE! I’m not even used to color SNOW or to fill in empty space between other things. And it leaves me feeling… well… empty. We need to talk. Your empty friend, White Crayon”
― Drew Daywalt, The Day the Crayons Quit

“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride's eye!--Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.”
― Herman Melville

“Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses that speak English?”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Wide rolling watery paires and potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still;tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness”
― Herman Melville, Herman Melville Collection: Moby Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener and Sailor Billy Budd

“That serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue.”
― Herman Melville, Herman Melville Collection: Moby Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener and Sailor Billy Budd

“There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch, slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!”
― Herman Melville

“Mas, quando um homem suspeita que algo está errado, às vezes acontece de, se já estiver envolvido no assunto, ele ocultar suas suspeitas até de si mesmo. Foi o que aconteceu comigo. Eu não disse nada e tentei não pensar em nada.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Seus movimentos deixavam claro que estava exausta. Quando os botes a cercaram, toda a parte superior do corpo da baleia, que de ordinário fica submersa, estava à mostra. Não houve piedade alguma. Apesar de sua idade, apesar da única nadadeira, a baleia devia morrer assassinada para que seu óleo pudesse iluminar alegres casamentos e outras festas dos homens, para dar luz às solenes igrejas onde se prega que os seres não devem fazer mal uns aos outros.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“- O que é essa coisa inescrutável e sobrenatural; que senhor oculto, cruel imperador sem remorsos é esse que me comanda contra todos os afetos e anseios naturais, e ordena que eu continue a atolar-me, que me pressiona para fazer, imprudente, aquilo que, em meu próprio coração, eu não me atreveria a ousar? É Ahab, Ahab? Sou eu, Deus, ou quem, que levanta esse braço? Mas se o grande Sol não se move por si mesmo, e nem uma única estrela pode girar a não ser por alguma força invisível, então como pode bater este pequeno coração, pensar este pequeno cérebro, a menos que Deus o faça bater, e o faça pensar, e não eu? Nós giramos e giramos neste mundo, homem, e o destino é a alavanca. E o tempo todo esse céu sorridente, esse mar profundo! A quem condenar quando o próprio juiz é arrastado para o tribunal?”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Herman Melville who split the atom of the traditional novel in the effort to make whaling a universal metaphor and smuggled into a book addressed to the most puritanical reading public the world has ever known a chapter on the whale’s foreskin and got away with it.”
― David Lodge, Changing Places

“Perhaps it is no overstatement to say, therefore, that Moby Dick’s main character is, not Ahab; nor the albino sperm whale; nor Nature, or the ocean; but rather the very ability to conscientiously tell a story well.”
― Bernardo E. Lopes, The underrated narrator: The important role Ishmael plays in Moby Dick

“And [Moby Dick's narrator] is so very smart, so very smart indeed, and so gifted with words, so very gifted, that at the right time he'll make you forget his presence, just to signal, at a certain point, that he was there all the time: and that he is actually you, a narrator to the troubled but no less amusing, and beautiful, human existence.”
― Bernardo E. Lopes, The underrated narrator: The important role Ishmael plays in Moby Dick

“Dear Duncan, You color with me, but why? Most of the time I’m the same
color as the page you are using me on –WHITE. If I didn’t have a black outline, you wouldn’t even know I was THERE! I’m not even used to color SNOW or to fill in empty space between other things. And it leaves me feeling… well… empty. We need to talk. Your empty friend, White Crayon”
― Drew Daywalt, The Day the Crayons Quit

“: In the amazing book Moby Dick by the author Herman Melville, the author recounts his story of being at sea. In the first part of his book, the author, calling himself Ishmael, is in a small sea-side town and he is sharing a bed with a man named Queequeg, and I felt saddest of all when I read the boring chapters that were only descriptions of whales, because I knew that the author was just trying to save us from his own sad story, just for a little while.”
― Samuel D. Hunter, The Whale

“For, d’ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray.”
― Herman Melville

“no, no, it’s a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he’s coming off to make us our coffee”
― Herman Melville, Melville: Moby-Dick, Billy Budd, and Other Writings