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Moby-Dick
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Moby-Dick

Novel by Herman Melville

Written workliterary workQ174596

Also known as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale · Moby Dick · The Whale · Moby Dick by Herman Melville · The White Whale

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  • October 18, 1851
  • , November 14, 1851
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194 statements · 16% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

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  • or, The Whale
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  • Moby Dick applies to name of subject: Moby-Dick · applies to name of object: Moby Dick
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  • 135 chapter
  • 1 epilogue
Epigraph
  • While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true. object stated in reference as: Hackluyt
  • WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundness or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted. object stated in reference as: Webster’s Dictionary · quotes work: Webster's Dictionary
  • WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen; A.S. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow. object stated in reference as: Richardson’s Dictionary
  • חו, Hebrew. ϰητος, Greek. CETUS, Latin. WHŒL, Anglo-Saxon. HVALT, Danish. WAL, Dutch. HWAL, Swedish. HVALUR, Icelandic. WHALE, English. BALEINE, French. BALLENA, Spanish. PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fegee. PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, Erromangoan. object stated in reference as: none
  • And God created great whales. object stated in reference as: Genesis · quotes work: Book of Genesis
  • Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary. object stated in reference as: Job · quotes work: Book of Job
  • Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. object stated in reference as: Jonah · quotes work: Book of Jonah
  • There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein. object stated in reference as: Psalms · quotes work: Psalms
Show 52 more
  • In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. object stated in reference as: Isaiah · quotes work: Isaiah
  • And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster’s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch. object stated in reference as: Holland’s Plutarch’s Morals · quotes work: Moralia
  • The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as much in length as four acres or arpens of land. object stated in reference as: Holland’s Pliny
  • Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a most monstrous size.... This came towards us, open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam. object stated in reference as: Tooke’s Lucian. “The True History.” · quotes work: A True Story
  • He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales, which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the king.... The best whales were catched in his own country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days. object stated in reference as: Other or Other’s verbal narrative taken down from his mouth by King Alfred, A.D. 890.
  • And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth, are immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in great security, and there sleeps. object stated in reference as: MONTAIGNE. —Apology for Raimond Sebond
  • Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job. object stated in reference as: Rabelais · quotes work: The Fourth Book
  • This whale’s liver was two cartloads. object stated in reference as: Stowe’s Annals
  • The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan. object stated in reference as: Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms
  • Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale. object stated in reference as: Ibid. “History of Life and Death.”
  • The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise. object stated in reference as: King Henry · quotes work: Henry IV, Part 1
  • Very like a whale. object stated in reference as: Hamlet · quotes work: Hamlet
  • Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art <br> Mote him availle, but to returne againe <br> To his wound’s worker, that with lowly dart, <br> Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine, <br> Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro’ the maine. object stated in reference as: The Fairie Queen · quotes work: The Faerie Queene
  • Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil. object stated in reference as: Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert · quotes work: Gondibert
  • What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit. object stated in reference as: Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E. · quotes work: Pseudodoxia Epidemica
  • Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail <br> He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail. <br> ... <br> Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears, <br> And on his back a grove of pikes appears. object stated in reference as: Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands
  • By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State—(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man. object stated in reference as: Opening sentence of Hobbes’s Leviathan · quotes work: Leviathan
  • Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of a whale. object stated in reference as: Pilgrim’s Progress · quotes work: The Holy War
  • That sea beast <br> Leviathan, which God of all his works <br> Created hugest that swim the ocean stream. object stated in reference as: Paradise Lost · quotes work: Paradise Lost
  • There Leviathan, <br> Hugest of living creatures, in the deep <br> Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims, <br> And seems a moving land; and at his gills <br> Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea. object stated in reference as: Ibid · quotes work: Paradise Lost
  • The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them. object stated in reference as: Fuller’s Profane and Holy State
  • So close behind some promontory lie <br> The huge Leviathan to attend their prey, <br> And give no chance, but swallow in the fry, <br> Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way. object stated in reference as: Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis · quotes work: Annus Mirabilis
  • While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water. object stated in reference as: Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchas
  • In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which nature has placed on their shoulders. object stated in reference as: Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll
  • Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship upon them. object stated in reference as: Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation
  • We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The Jonas-in-the-Whale.... Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but that is a fable.... They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains.... I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of herrings in his belly.... One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over. object stated in reference as: A Voyage to Greenland, A.D. 1671. Harris Coll.
  • Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren. object stated in reference as: Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross
  • Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness. object stated in reference as: Richard Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans. A.D. 1668.
  • Whales in the sea God’s voice obey. object stated in reference as: N. E. Primer · quotes work: The New England Primer
  • We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the northward of us. object stated in reference as: Captain Cowley’s Voyage round the Globe, A.D. 1729.
  • ... and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain. object stated in reference as: Ulloa’s South America
  • To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, <br> We trust the important charge, the petticoat. <br> Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail, <br> Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale. object stated in reference as: Rape of the Lock · quotes work: The Rape of the Lock
  • If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest animal in creation. object stated in reference as: Goldsmith, Nat. Hist.
  • If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great whales. object stated in reference as: Goldsmith to Johnson
  • In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the whale, in order to avoid being seen by us. object stated in reference as: Cook’s Voyages
  • The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent their too near approach. object stated in reference as: Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in 1772
  • The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen. object stated in reference as: Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the French minister in 1778
  • And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? object stated in reference as: Edmund Burke’s reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery
  • Spain—a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe. object stated in reference as: Edmund Burke. (somewhere.)
  • A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue, said to be grounded on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the property of the king. object stated in reference as: Blackstone · quotes work: Commentaries on the Laws of England
  • Soon to the sport of death the crews repair: <br> Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends <br> The barbed steel, and every turn attends. object stated in reference as: Falconer’s Shipwreck
  • Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, <br> And rockets blew self driven, <br> To hang their momentary fire <br> Around the vault of heaven. <br> “So fire with water to compare, The ocean serves on high, <br> Up-spouted by a whale in air, To express unwieldy joy. object stated in reference as: Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London
  • Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke, with immense velocity. object stated in reference as: John Hunter’s account of the dissection of a whale. (A small sized one.)
  • The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale’s heart. object stated in reference as: Paley’s Theology · quotes work: Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity
  • The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet. object stated in reference as: Baron Cuvier
  • In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them. object stated in reference as: Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fishery
  • In the free element beneath me swam, <br> Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle, <br> Fishes of every colour, form, and kind; <br> Which language cannot paint, and mariner Had never seen; from dread Leviathan <br> To insect millions peopling every wave: <br> Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands, <br> Led by mysterious instincts through that waste <br> And trackless region, though on every side Assaulted by voracious enemies, <br> Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw, <br> With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs. object stated in reference as: Montgomery’s World before the Flood
  • Io! Paean! Io! sing. <br> To the finny people’s king. <br> Not a mightier whale than this <br> In the vast Atlantic is; <br> Not a fatter fish than he, <br> Flounders round the Polar Sea. object stated in reference as: Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale
  • In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed: there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s grand-children will go for bread. object stated in reference as: Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket
  • I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones. object stated in reference as: Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales · quotes work: Twice-Told Tales
  • She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago. object stated in reference as: Ibid · quotes work: Twice-Told Tales
  • No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his sprout; he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow! object stated in reference as: Cooper’s Pilot · quotes work: The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea
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  • It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.
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