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Herman Melville's "Moby Dick": 10 most memorable lines
While Herman Melville lived, little attention was paid to "Moby Dick." When the ambitious, electric, darkly philosophical story of a mad sea captain's obsession with an albino whale was published in 1851, most of the world ignored it. It wasn't until the 1920s – a few decades after Melville's 1891 death – that literary historians began to take note. Here are 10 of the lines most memorably associated with the book now called a masterwork of world literature.
Illustration by Rockwell Kent/Courtesy of the Plattsburgh State Art Museum, State University of New York USA, Rockwell Kent Collection, Bequest of Sally Kent Gordon
1. How we begin
"Call me Ishmael."
– Herman Melville created one of the best-known opening lines in all of literature with this first sentence of "Moby Dick"
