"My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all."...

From The Jeroboam's Story:"Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the measureless self-deception of the fanatic...

"Granting that the White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds a certain...

"God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a...

"Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched...

"With the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only...

"The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them,...

From Moby-Dick: "Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured...

"Not one jot of Ahab’s broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had...

"What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demonic, I am madness maddened!"...