Quote explorer
Find passages in the complete novel by words, themes, or characters.
Opening the book…
Every key quote
19 quotations from the study guide and character guide, in book order, with their line number in the chapter.
“Call me Ishmael.”
Ishmael · Chapter 1
Read in Chapter 1“Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah”
Father Mapple · Chapter 9
Read in Chapter 9“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
Ishmael, on Queequeg's home island · Chapter 12
Read in Chapter 12“It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the voyage”
Captain Peleg · Chapter 16
Read in Chapter 16“Elijah! thought I”
Ishmael on Elijah · Chapter 19
Read in Chapter 19“They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod”
Ishmael on Flask · Chapter 27
Read in Chapter 27“Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues”
Ishmael on Daggoo · Chapter 27
Read in Chapter 27“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.”
Ahab · Chapter 36
Read in Chapter 36“it was Moby Dick that dismasted me”
Ahab on the whale · Chapter 36
Read in Chapter 36“I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance.”
Starbuck · Chapter 36
Read in Chapter 36“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”
Stubb · Chapter 39
Read in Chapter 39“So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded;”
Ishmael, on the monkey-rope · Chapter 72
Read in Chapter 72“Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft”
Ishmael on Tashtego · Chapter 78
Read in Chapter 78“Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects”
Ishmael on Pip · Chapter 93
Read in Chapter 93“Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship”
Captain Boomer · Chapter 100
Read in Chapter 100“Hemp only can kill thee.”
Fedallah to Ahab · Chapter 117
Read in Chapter 117“My boy, my own boy is among them.”
Captain Gardiner · Chapter 128
Read in Chapter 128“to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee;”
Ahab · Chapter 135
Read in Chapter 135“Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main.”
Ishmael · Epilogue
Read in Epilogue