
Moby Dick: or, the White Whale

"Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!"
Herman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world.
Herman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulance did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so it was.—Most
... See moreHerman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
Herman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.
Herman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
Herman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
Call me Ishmael.
Herman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth.
Herman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.