"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian" (36).

"Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air" (45).

"This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds" (160).

"Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy ..." (319). (I feel like this line is a moment when Melville interjects himself into the text and speaks directly to the reader.)