we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat

arrive at an understanding

Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?

so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee

What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish

The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale

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

the external difference between them is mainly observable in their heads

Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars.

if you have anything important to tell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game

feel the bumps on the head of this Leviathan

we whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world

beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony

a whale must be near

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

As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale’s head may be compared to a Roman war-chariot

Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away

For a few minutes the struggle was intensely critical; for while they still slacked out the tightened line in one direction, and still plied their oars in another, the contending strain threatened to take them under.

But Ahab said nothing

It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye.

hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it

complete revenge he had, and without being the avenger

It never wriggles.

As for his true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any.

at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally

the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships

I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage

I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs

Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!

Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike

What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch!

Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land.

the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and vials—devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition

he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around

his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically called a clean one (that is, an empty one)

Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the elephant’s brow is majestic.

Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it soon resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement

This is a nasty night, lad.

simply irresistible

This is my substitute for pistol and ball.

speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee

the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same fobbing of them

Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?

You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.

But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side.

my men, the thunder turned old Ahab’s needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as true as any

one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life

They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.

You shuddered as you gazed