Herman Melville

Quotes

• “There are some strange summer mornings in the country, when he who is but a sojourner from the city shall early walk for...”
• “Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or mother, that so it might be, we could glorify them, wi...”
• “It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not b...”
• “I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any othe...”
• “It was during the 1820s-the beginning of the era of Jacksonian settler democracy-that the unique US origin myth evolved ...”
• “Certain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic...”
• “I had now been on board the frigate upward of a year, and remained unscourged; the ship was homeward-bound, and in a few...”
• “Benevolence and policy-Christianity and Machiavelli-dissuade from penal severities toward the subdued. Abstinence here i...”
• “Says a writer whom few know, "Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to ...”
• “It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the poetry...”
• “There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confo...”
• “It is - or seems to be - a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of ...”
• “In the light of that martial code whereby it was formally to be judged, innocence and guilt personified in Claggart and ...”
• “Nature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have ...”
• “Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. They talk of the dignity of work...”
• “Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appr...”
• “Though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that pro...”
• “But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, s...”
• “Though this statement and a few other variants of it have been widely attributed to Herman Melville, it is actually a pa...”
• “The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him...”
• “Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands up...”
• “Marlene Wagman-Geller, on some of the reasons for Melville's dedication of Moby-Dick: "In Token of my admiration for his...”
• “For the future of the freed slaves we may well be concerned; but the future of the whole country, involving the future o...”
• “What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event - the falling of a l...”
• “Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alp...”
• “But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.I feel it stealin...”
• “All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed - there...”
• “One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spi...”
• “I've had my career. I've had my success. God willing, it should have happened to Herman Melville who deserved it a great...”
• “A man of true science... uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the sm...”
• “If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? T...”
• “Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, including bits of a review of his work that he had written (c. 16 April 1851); published ...”
• “The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to...”
• “Letter to Evert Augustus Duyckinck (3 March 1849); published in The Letters of Herman Melville (1960) edited by Merrell ...”
• “Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb...”
• “This has sometimes been paraphrased: A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. where "hard" c...”
• “What troopsOf generous boys in happiness thus bred - Saturnians through life's Tempe led,Went from the North and came fr...”
• “We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and along these fibers, as sympathe...”
• “Melville and I had a talk about time and eternity, things of this world and next, and books, and publishers, and all pos...”
• “Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, as well as philanthropists toward the blacks our fellow-men. In all thing...”
• “Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits...”
• “And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous- a sort of innocent and tr...”
• “Letter to Samuel Savage (24 August 1851), as published in The Writings of Herman Melville : The Northwestern-Newberry Ed...”
• “Letter to Catherine G. Lansing (5 September 1877), published in The Melville Log : A Documentary Life of Herman Melville...”
• “Letter to Evert Augustus Duyckinck (24 February 1849); published in The Letters of Herman Melville (1960) edited by Merr...”
• “Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize ci...”
• “Letter to Evert Augustus Duyckinck (3 March 1849); published in The Letters of Herman Melville (1960) edited by Merrell ...”
• “This statement is usually attributed entirely to Melville, but the way he presents it in the story indicates that he mig...”
• “Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape...”
• “With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:The hemlock shakes in the raf...”