“Swim away from me, do ye?” murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water. There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced.

Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!

the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents

even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on

I heard Ahab mutter, ‘Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine; swears that I must play them, and no others.’

in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom

And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!

all of us are Ahabs

let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man

Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.

The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness.

“The gallows, ye mean.—I am immortal then, on land and on sea,” cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;—“Immortal on land and on sea!”

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

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.