Moby Dick Quotes

Call me Ishmael – the iconic opening line of Moby Dick.

It’s not down on any map; true places never are. – Ishmael’s reflection on the allure of unknown lands.

I know that he can charm away the madness that bites my brain. – Ishmael’s thoughts on the power of music.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul… I quietly take to the ship.

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

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul… I quietly take to the ship.

Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses… and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.

There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity, nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his entire race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.

All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.

It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.

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

Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.

To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges.

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, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea.

I try all things, I achieve what I can.

Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes for granted something unreasoning just on trust, for the life of him, though he knows it not for a fact, that all his hopes and desires all the longing of his heart are set on a wayside crest that would be quite unreachable.

With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

If he not be one of the spirits doomed to roam the earth until the judgment day — as most Christian men devoutly believe — then verily, and indeed, I say, he doth be one of them malice aforethought.

And now marking that the vane or flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had just gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.

I thowt I’d kill him!” cried Taggart.

My soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned; and by a madman!

Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge.

Untried is their strength, when they saw the commencement of the first pulsing circle they might have taken a wild flight upward and averted their lots.

A dark valley between three mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint earthly symbol.

Like dislodging ice flakes from a fluke-hole in a lake, the whaleboat, manned by shovedfrozen men, gratefully dropped away from the ship, and gliding down the sea like a finned thing; the shrouded steersman starboarded his helm, and, pointing the ship’s prow midway between London and the Isle of Wight, pointed northwards.

He’s booked for Red Crock and no mistake; and where’s your Rancocus now?

For sometimes, ere the undulating swells, like the alternations of a great earthquake, rolled the low, mild billows; Jonah glided along at ease, sliding like a man in skate-blades on rows of interceding angels. Then all of a sudden, he would be seen glowing in the darkness; now like a solitary grandeur in the northern lights; and now, like a archangel in rays culminating from the half-opened heavens.

His yell was a bit of the white noise of the Universe here was a man with whom it never cooled off, who never became CATATONIC.

Squaring his long yards, he stood for an instant face to face with the Pequod’s whaleship.

All whale-boats carry certain curious contrivances, originally invented by the NANTUCKET WHALERS, called DRuggs

No Pinarian adventitiousness plagues them, nor crook-chasms of smell; no peculiar emanations have enriched our hearts for six long months…

Being sober, and mindful of the fact

The same wave that at sunset rose in a golden frenzy, or sunrise fell into an immobile dreamer, that seemed always melting away through the ether, had become fixed.

Ahab and his crew with wrought iron made from the German Birnbaum’s living iron (paraphrase)