Widely regarded as Herman Melville's magnum opus and one of the greatest American novels, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale was published in 1851 during the American Renaissance. Set aboard the whaling ship Pequod, Moby-Dick follows Captain Ahab and his quest for revenge against an elusive white whale. Narrated by the character Ishmael, a young boy on the ship, the story centers on the characters Queequeg, a skilled and tattooed harpooner, and Starbuck, the rational first mate who is often in conflict with Captain Ahab. Along with obsession and vengeance, the novel explores the importance of friendship and the impact of social class. Drawing heavily from the perspective of experienced sailors, Moby-Dick also offers insights into human nature and confronts the consequences of human actions on the natural world.
Below are 30+ of the best quotes reflecting Moby-Dick's themes of human nature, determination, revenge, obsession, and madness.
The best quotes from Moby-Dick on human nature
“I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.”
“It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.”
“See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.”
“For we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“There is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid.”
The best quotes from Moby-Dick on spirituality and the natural world
“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.”
“Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.”
“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”
“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”
“Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.”
The best quotes from Moby-Dick on curiosity and determination
“Ignorance is the parent of fear.”
“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”
“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
“But what's this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale! art not game for Moby Dick?”
“An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.”
The best quotes from Moby-Dick on revenge and madness
“Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.”
“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.”
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; 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.”
“Vengeance on a dumb brute that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing … seems blasphemous.”
“Human madness is often times a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”
“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”
“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.”
