Moby Dick Quotes

“Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too.Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth - So here goes again.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“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 life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual 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 beckoned 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. Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the White Whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so causedhim to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself. 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 for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“It is as sweet as early grass butter in April.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“As touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other's cross-bones, the first hail is— "How many skulls?"— the same way that whalers hail— "How many barrels?" And that question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each other's villanous likenesses.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Io credo che abbiamo preso un grosso abbaglio in questa faccenda della Vita e della Morte. Credo che ciò che chiamano la mia ombra sulla terra sia la mia sostanza vera. Credo che nel guardare alle cose spirituali noi siamo come ostriche che osservano il sole attraverso l’acqua e ritengono quell’acqua densa la più sottile delle atmosfere. Credo che il mio corpo sia solo la feccia del mio essere migliore. Di fatto, prenda il mio corpo chi vuole: prendetelo, non sono affatto io. E allora tre evviva a Nantucket, e venga la lancia sfondata, e il corpo sfondato, quando vogliono, poiché, di sfondarmi l’anima, nemmeno Giove è capace.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Pensar é audácia”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Look not too long in the face of fire, o man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching thriller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp- all others but liars!
Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. 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. "All is vanity." All. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing grave-yards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefor jolly;- not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain" (i.e., even while living) "in the congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to the 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

“- 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

“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

“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

“From hell's heart I stab at thee! For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Meditation and water are wedded forever.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“I love to sail forbidden seas, to stand on barbarous coasts.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

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

“If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman’s arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which has spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with the doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but than an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as is own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Queequeq was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God? Miserable man! Oh! Most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one--I mean a downright bumpkin dandy--a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hayseed! how bitterly will burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Abominable are the tumblers into which he puts his poison. Though true cylinders without—within, the volcanos green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads’ goblets. Fill to t h i s mark, and your charge is but a penny; to t h i s a penny more; and so on to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodged in.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“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 draughts. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“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

“Cada ballenera lleva un buen número de cartas para varias naves: entregarlas a los destinatarios depende del mero azar de encontrarlos en los cuatro océanos. Así, muchas cartas nunca llegan a destino, y otras sólo son recibidas cuando ya han cumplido dos o tres años.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Por eso, ante los ojos deseosos de muerte de esta clase de hombres, en cuyo corazón aún subsiste un íntimo repudio contra el suicidio, el océano a que todos acuden y que a todos acepta extiende seductor la inmensidad de sus terrores inconcebibles y atractivos, sus aventuras inauditas y maravillosas. Y desde los corazones de infinitos Pacíficos, millares de sirenas cantan: «Ven, oh tú que tienes el corazón deshecho: aquí hay otra vida que no exige el pago previo de la muerte; aquí hay maravillas sobrenaturales sin necesidad de morir para alcanzarlas. ¡Ven! Sepúltate en una vida que para el mundo de la tierra, aborrecedor y aborrecible, es más olvidadiza que la muerte. ¡Ven! ¡Pon tu propia lápida en el cementerio y ven, que seremos tus esposas!».”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Así, este divino y misterioso Pacífico circunda la masa entera del mundo, hace de todas las costas una bahía y parece el corazón del mundo, que late con sus mareas. Henchido por sus eternas olas, es imposible no reconocer en él al dios seductor, es imposible no inclinarse ante él como ante Pan.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers. The title was, “Dan Coopman,” wherefore I concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one “Fitz Swackhammer.” But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus and St. Pott’s, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble ... (Chapter 101: The Decanter)”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick