15 uses
- Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!Chapters 127-129 — The Deck; The Pequod meets the Rachel; The Cabin—Ahab and Pip (24% in)
- Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable.Extracts (82% in)
- Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner.Chapters 1-3 — Loomings; The Carpet-Bag; The Spouter-Inn (91% in)
- Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is—which was the only way he could get there—thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself.Chapters 10-12 — A Bosom Friend; Nightgown; Biographical (20% in)
- Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its dimensioned form does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.Chapters 31-33 — Queen Mab; Cetology; The Specksnyder (58% in)
- Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!Chapters 40-42 — Midnight, Forecastle; Moby Dick; The Whiteness of the Whale (18% in)
- ...but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent—those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun...Chapters 49-51 — The Hyena; Ahab's Boat and Crew - Fedallah; The Spirit-Spout (52% in)
- For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn.Chapters 52-54 — The Albatross; The Gam; The Town-Ho's Story (26% in)
- The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations.Chapters 55-57 — Monstrous Pictures of Whales; Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales; Whales in Paint.... (35% in)
- Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me; with a shock I came back to life.Chapters 61-63 — Stubb Kills a Whale; The Dart; The Crotch (10% in)
- Preserving an interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the Jeroboam's boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by this time it blew very fresh), with her main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed some way ahead; but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper bearings again.Chapters 70-72 — The Sphynx; The Jeroboam's Story; The Monkey-Rope (25% in)
- Nor have there been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver—an inflated bag of wind—which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom.Chapters 82-84 — The Honour and Glory of Whaling; Jonah Historically Regarded; Pitchpoling (57% in)
- And though now nailed amidst all the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes, yet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still preserved its Quito glow.Chapters 97-99 — The Lamp; Stowing Down & Clearing Up; Doubloon (43% in)
- Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal.Chapters 100-102 — The Pequod meets....; The Decanter; A Bower in the Arsacides (33% in)
- The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics.Chapters 100-102 — The Pequod meets....; The Decanter; A Bower in the Arsacides (99% in)
There are no more uses of "preserve" in Moby Dick.
Typical Usage
(best examples)