"In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance."

"Ah! How they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them!"

"The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race."

"The hand of fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of the previous day, the rack of the past night's suspense, the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled along."

"Inferable from these statements, are many collateral subtile matters touching the chase of whales."

"When night obscures the fish, the creature's future wake through the darkness is almost as established to the sagacious mind of the hunter, as the pilot's coast is to him."

"Men, this gold is mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide here till the White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of ye first raises him, upon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man's."

"Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors."

"If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads and give an old wives' darkling hint."

"What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck?"