Top 100 Herman Melville Quotes

#1. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #11696
#2. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse,and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #30154
#3. Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old; but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #32736
#4. If you begin the day with a laugh, you may, nevertheless, end it with a sob and a sigh.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #38958
#5. He offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #44081
#6. Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #60282
#7. As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #67184
#8. He's no more afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #76769
#9. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #112408
#10. You know nothing till you know all; which is the reason we never know any thing.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #142997
#11. Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #163769
#12. 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

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #180824
#13. Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #194531
#14. There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #203592
#15. Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. (moby dick chap 29 p123)

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #262629
#16. Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #276172
#17. I try all things, I achieve what I can.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #291598
#18. To be hated cordially is only a left-handed compliment

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #307230
#19. All dies! and not alone
The aspiring trees and men and grass;
The poets' forms of beauty pass,
And noblest deeds they are undone,
Even truth itself decays, and lo,
From truth's sad ashes pain and falsehood grow.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #346464
#20. Never joke at funerals, or during business transactions.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #346632
#21. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #387255
#22. There was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #397005
#23. Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill your dam bellies 'till dey bust - and den die

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #397677
#24. The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #402188
#25. immortality is but ubiquity in time); that

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #417815
#26. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #423440
#27. 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.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #435651
#28. As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing,never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright; and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #455863
#29. In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #459858
#30. Father Mapple uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed to be kneeling at the bottom of the sea.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #480832
#31. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #486651
#32. A ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #515971
#33. The terrors of truth and dart of death To faith alike are vain.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #524018
#34. We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #526960
#35. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #559571
#36. By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. Aye,

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #570729
#37. All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #576616
#38. If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #585051
#39. God is liberal of color; so should man be.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #608348
#40. And though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #646348
#41. Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home!

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #671694
#42. The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food of thy body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters; and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #739160
#43. Multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #747329
#44. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #757038
#45. Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #812719
#46. The entire merit of a man can never be made known; nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names; as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #819917
#47. Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck's tears the glue.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #841135
#48. The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #852180
#49. The further our civilization advances upon its present lines so much the cheaper sort of thing does "fame" become, especially of the literary sort. This species of "fame" a waggish acquaintance says can be manufactured to order, and sometimes is so manufactured.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #870849
#50. art is the objectification of feeling

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #883685
#51. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #887055
#52. If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #897483
#53. Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #915851
#54. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #917988
#55. The idea of Jehovah was born here ... Out of the rude elements of the insignificant thoughts thoughts that are in all men, they reared the transcendent conception of a God.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #941655
#56. Of the quaking recruit, three pitched battles make a grim grenadier; and he who shrank from the muzzle of a cannon, is now ready to yield his mustache for a sponge.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #962024
#57. There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #969522
#58. Intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1000455
#59. The Navy is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate. Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1020729
#60. An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1064878
#61. I am past scorching; not easily can'st thou scorch a scar.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1146775
#62. For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1176853
#63. Genius is full of trash.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1191010
#64. For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who "believe and tremble" has one.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1191569
#65. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1203630
#66. What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1220857
#67. Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1245718
#68. Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1268772
#69. What a beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to ceiling, lines, or rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal satins.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1310943
#70. His mind appeared unstrung, if not still more seriously affected.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1317118
#71. Nameless miseries of the numberless mortals

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1325292
#72. ...if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1325569
#73. In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1341665
#74. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1360861
#75. might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage's sword,

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1374830
#76. All the trees, with all their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1417310
#77. Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1421376
#78. Queegqueg no care what god made him shark ... wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god what made him shark must be one dam Ingin.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1426058
#79. The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1475239
#80. Mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old?

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1494611
#81. Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it?

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1509364
#82. He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1531074
#83. the king of kind hearts and polite fellows

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1557522
#84. I will live and die by this testimony: that I loved a good conscience; that I never invaded another man's liberty; and that I preserved my own.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1559330
#85. Can't withstand thee, then, old man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands, this is all thou breathest.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1605538
#86. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1607146
#87. Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1611665
#88. There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1635901
#89. his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1640324
#90. Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1655728
#91. For some of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1663290
#92. You cannot hide the soul.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1670898
#93. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1694285
#94. for immortality is but ubiquity in time

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1734719
#95. Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1770063
#96. It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1773793
#97. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1782497
#98. In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1803547
#99. Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1804616
#100. Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity; and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes #1861823

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