"The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness."

"Few men's courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action."

"For to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stands in a sort of corporeal relation."

"To accomplish his object, Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order."

"This man and this whale again came together, and the one vanquished the other."

"All deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within."

"Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind...

"It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me."

"What the white whale was to Ahab has been hinted; what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid."

"All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad."