I’m quite certain that he’s no more fit to command a whale-ship than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he’s a baboon.

the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell

So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of them declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few of them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its true nature and form

I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.

that famous lexicographer’s uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author like me

It fell at Ahab’s feet.

it’s against my principles to drink with the man I’ve diddled

he broods within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings

this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously

any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old

grease the bottom

stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!

you must first get fast to a whale, before any pitchpoling comes into play

the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background

you may well believe

herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness

Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!

Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs

For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness

But no more of this.

Nantucket was her great original—the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the first dead American whale was stranded.

the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water

When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?

I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do

his credulous disciples believed that he had specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one of many marks in the wide margin allowed

methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul

you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks

there is a certain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale’s which the Right Whale’s sadly lacks

he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion

However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing really happens