Quotes About Whales

Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!

Captain Ahab had evinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the creature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed working in him; as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousand other whales were brought to his ship, all that would not one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object.

Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and scowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument would seem furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction.

The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulence though, and when about three-fourths grown, break up, and separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems.

And God created great whales." —genesis.

Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can't afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don't jump any more. Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence. But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again.

These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks—

For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs;

These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks— the Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist.

Why, thou monkey, we've been cruising now hard upon three years and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth when thou art up there.

It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales, that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages enrolled among the crew.   ââ'¬â€NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT OF THE TAKING AND RETAKING OF THE WHALE-SHIP HOBOMACK.

In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters

This may sound weird, but I love to listen to whale music when a guy goes down on me. I have all these bizarre underwater fantasies. Sometimes I even imagine that I'm the female whale and that I'm being called by the male whale, with his like, what, fifty-foot cock.

One little known fact: The water that spouts out of a whale's blowhole in such a picturesque way reeks like the most toxic fart imaginable.

Delphinidae, or oceanic dolphins, are the largest family of toothed whales, containing approximately thirty-seven species that range from the four-foot-long Hector's dolphin to the twelve-foot bottlenose dolphin to the twenty-five-foot orca, or killer whale.

It is not just humans who are musical. Animals, too. This should be obvious in the thousands of birdsongs I have spawned, or the clicking of dolphins, or the moaning of humpback whales.

We have long laboured under an obtuse presupposition that the senses by which other living creatures perceive their world must to a great extent resemble our own; but in fact we are, by scientific invention, only now beginning to approach methods of perception that the whales have always owned as their birthright.

Whatever bro, tell it to the whales

In the year 1712, a Captain Hussey, cruising in his little boat for right whales along Nantucket's south shore, was blown out to sea in a fierce northerly gale.

I go out to the cliffs with binoculars to see whales find their way in from the southern mist and I walk here in this paddock, stubbornly, wondering at the heat each of us leaves in our wake.

Go, he said; in peace. And sing with the whales.

In shallow men the fish of small thoughts cause much commotion, in magnanimous oceanic minds the whales of inspiration cause hardly a ruffle" (Mao Tse-tung).

Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat — at least not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I suggest that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply good middling-sized whales.

It takes 25 years or so for a male sperm whale to reach the edge of social maturity, when it attains the size and weight of those I saw being butchered. It took less than four hours to transform those once vibrant creatures into the basic ingredients of candle wax, lubricating oils, cosmetics, fertilizer, ivory trinkets, and food for domesticated animals.