MOBY DICK by Herman Melville

This site would not be complete without including something on Moby Dick, one of the best novels ever written. I read it for the first time in 1957, when I was in 9th grade English class in Island Trees High School in Levittown N.Y. My teacher was one Theodor C. Ohland, who risked his job and his career to bring me this experience.

Thanks Ted...

My copy of Moby Dick or The Whale is the original Modern Library edition with the illustrations by Rockwell Kent. I recently bought a 1992 reprint that seems to be identical to the original except for a biographical note on Melville.

Read Moby Dick Here!


My Favorite Quotes:

"Who ain't a slave. Tell me that." (pg 5)

"Ignorance is the parent of fear."(pg 30)

"How is it that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss;" (pg 52)

"for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself." (pg 76)

"It is not down on any map. True places never are." (pg 79)

"It's better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one." (pg 116)

"Know ye now Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth: that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea;" (pg 153)

"Think not is my eleventh commandment: and sleep when you can is my twelfth-" (pg 184)

"the chick that's in him pecks the shell. T'will soon be out." (pg231)

"He tasks me;" (pg 236)

"There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one captain that is lord over the Pequod.- On deck!" (pg 682)

"She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not." (pg 762)

"From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop." (pg 775)

"from Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." (pg 820)

"Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago." (pg 822)

"It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan." (epilogue)


You can surely find all of the Melville information that you need on the web, but you might want to start with The Life and Works of Herman Melville, which is a pretty informative site.

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