A must-read for your English class is actually not as boring as you think (and as I thought, too). The deep messages that this Classic English Novel conveys is outstanding, and I just know that you will fall in love with it later in life, if you already didn’t.
If you have read some of my previous articles, you would know that my favorite author is Oscar Wilde, which is kind of miles different from Herman Melville.
I had a love-hate relationship in my Uni years with this book written by Herman Melville, but a few years after actually graduating, I started to understand what this book really is about.
But nevertheless, now, years after Uni, I truly understand Moby Dick. If you don’t become so obsessed over a certain goal, so that nothing else matters, you won’t be able to understand it.
Now, without further ado, here are the best Moby Dick quotes!
Best Moby Dick Quotes or The Whale Quotes
1. “Ignorance is the parent of fear.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
2. “It is not down on any map; true places never are.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
3. “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
4. “I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
5. “Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
6. “It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.”― Herman Melville, Moby Dick oder Der Wal
7. “A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
8. “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
9. “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
10. “See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
Quotes From Moby Dick That Are Exceptional
1. “There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
2. “As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
3. “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, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
See also: 100 Oscar Wilde Quotes For Every Point Of Your Life
4. “There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
5. “Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.” ― Herman Melville
6. “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
7. “It does seem to me, that 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. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
8. “God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart forever; the vulture the very creature he creates.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
9. “He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
10. “Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
11. “Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
12. “The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven.
Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
13. “…that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
14. “Even though white is often associated with things, that are pleasant and pure, there is a peculiar emptiness about the color white. It is the emptiness of the white that is more disturbing, than even the bloodiness of red.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
15. “Is he mad? Anyway there’s something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
16. “Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home!” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
17. “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
18. “Here some one thrust these cards into these old hands of mine, swears that I must play them, and no others. And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right, live in the game, and die in it.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
19. “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.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
20. “The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
Famous Quotes From Moby Dick Aka The Whale Quotes
1. “…to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
2. “In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
3. “Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure….. Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle , and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
4. “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
5. “Call me Ishmael.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
6. “There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for avast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
7. “We cannibals must help these Christians.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
8. “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… I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
9. “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
10. “Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
11. “From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
12. “My body is but the lees of my better being.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
13. “That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
14. “In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
15. “I am past scorching; not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
16. “There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:– through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
17. “There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
18. “I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass. ” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
19. “There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
See also: 150 Lao Tzu Quotes To Spread The Wisdom Of The Old Master
20. “Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
Beautiful Quotes From Moby Dick
1. “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
2. “Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
3. “But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
4. “Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from that same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
5. “for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
6. “However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, can afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and to be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
7. “We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly 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. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
8. “Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders! There’s a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist–hark! By Jove, I have it! Look, you Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter; and now I’ll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there’s Aries, or the Ram–lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull–he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins–that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path–he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that’s our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or Scales–happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when whang comes the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here’s the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There’s a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
9. “How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg – a cozy, loving pair.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
10. “Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
11. “Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
See also: 120 Walt Disney Quotes To Dare You To Dream Big
12. “Madman! Look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
13. “Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries–stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be atheist in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
14. “The pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first described, and the bow must bear
the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked
for favorable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
15. “…what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
16. “The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up—flaked up, with rose-water snow.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
17. “Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
18. “Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
19. “Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more?” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
20. “But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
See also: 90 Most Brilliant Pride and Prejudice Quotes To Remember
Inspirational And Motivational Quotes From Moby Dick
1. “I try all things, I achieve what I can.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
2. “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. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
3. “All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
4. “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 Whale
5. “All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
6. “For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
7. “Yea, foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
8. “I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
9. “And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
10. “Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick oder Der Wal
11. “Ahab and aguish lay stretched together in one hammock.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
12. “Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his lifespot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beconed him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
13. “I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
14. “Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about–however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way–either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
15. “It is not down in any map; true places never are.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
16. “Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
17. “Were I the wind, I’d blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
18. “Ignorance is the parent of fear” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
19. “Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
20. “a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
Deep And Philosophical Moby Dick Quotes
1. “Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.” ― Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
2. “Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
3. “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 Whale
4. “Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
5. “Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
6. “Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.”― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
7. “Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way— either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
8. “The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
9. “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 when 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 a bookstore as soon as I can.
That is my substitute for the pistol and ball.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
10. “Then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
11. “Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? 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. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
12. “Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
13. “If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
14. “and tell him to paint me a sign, with-“no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;” might as well kill both birds at once.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
15. “For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
16. “Doesn’t the devil live forever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see any person wearing mourning for the devil?” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
17. “The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true– not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
18. “Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows — a colorless, all- color of atheism from which we shrink?” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
19. “Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and fastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras.” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
20. “All mortal greatness is but disease.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Wha“le
21. “So, when on one side you hoist in Locke’s head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant’s and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
22. “Consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? 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. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
23. “Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
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24. “However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
25. “There is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
26. “..for we all are dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending..” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
27. “All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
28. “Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
29. “It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
30. “Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale
Final Word
I hope that you have enjoyed reading my chosen Moby Dick quotes from the whole book.
While you can enjoy the adventures and unexpected actions in the plot, you can also think more deeply about the political, philosophical, and tragicomic commentary throughout the whole plot.
This is not without a reason, one of the most popular and most known examples of English Classic novels, that will always stay relevant.
What do you think about this book? Which quote did you find the most interesting?
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