"A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."

"Genius is full of trash."

"Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts."

"For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it."

"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."

"Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe."

"There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man."

"The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free."

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it."

"We cannibals must help these Christians."

"I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself"

"In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers."

"Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none."

"See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them."

"I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy."

"Truth is in things, and not in words."

"In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans."

"Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness."

"Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head."

"Whatever my fate, I'll go to it laughing."

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."

"Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters."

"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."

"I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb."