"For every one knows that this earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless...

"Good-humored, easy, and careless, Stubb presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all...

"Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment, but a thing simply useful to him and always at hand upon all...

"Looking into Starbuck's eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted...

"For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!"

"In landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, as indefinite as God."

"All deep and earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of the sea."

"Wonderful things are always unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs."

"Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overheard; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave...

"It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him."