Moby Dick was first published in 1851, but the book wasn't recognised as a masterpiece until many years after Herman Melville was dead.
The book is beautifully written, but beauty can be cruel, unmerciful - there's no soft edge to it. Powerful and lyrical, there's a sort of inevitability to Ahab's rage, railing at his fate as he gets closer and closer to the edge of reason. While the sea suffuses every page - Melville is (quite rightly) in awe of it. These weren't day sailors, they were men who fought the elements every minute of every in brutal, unmitigating combat.
Plus, Ahab was nuts, mad at the world. His own brother had pushed him overboard so he could steal his girl, and in the process, Ahab's leg had been chomped off by Moby Dick. There's your motive right there, bub.
So, in no particular order (but my favourite at the end):
These are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.
However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.
By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.
"Come, Ahab’s compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!"
Truly to enjoy bodily warmth,some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
"There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar." Ignorance is the parent of fear.
It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment.
"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. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville
ps - it helps if you shout that last one out loud, shaking your fist at the heavens
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[[pps - please check out some of my other quote collections here - The Guy Quote]]
ppps - Led Zep did a song called Moby Dick, with some kick-arse drums:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRuTcnd8YLU&w=700]