“I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though.”

“...the great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open...”

“It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.”

“oaths and anchors equally will drag: naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy.”

“Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when-There she blows!-the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again.”

“There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”

“Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.”