Herman Melville Quotes - Page 15

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• The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head

  Herman Melville

  Games, Long, Sailing

  Herman Melville (1962). “Billy Budd, Sailor”, p.83, University of Chicago Press

  10 Copy quote

• If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.

  Herman Melville

  Prayer, Men, Might

  Herman Melville (1852). “Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities”, p.7

  4 Copy quote

• At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.

  Herman Melville

  Wine, Sea, Water

  Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.346, Northwestern University Press

  16 Copy quote

• Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.

  Herman Melville

  Kings, Twenties, Violence

  Herman Melville (2012). “Mardi: And A Voyage Thither (Annotated Complete Edition)”, p.439, Jazzybee Verlag

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Food, Light, Oysters

  Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.299, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• And tell him to paint me a sign, with-no suicides permitted here, and no smloing in the parlor; might as well kill both birds at once.

  Herman Melville

  Suicide, Bird, Might

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale”, p.96, Cosimo, Inc.

  6 Copy quote

• Traveling takes the ink out of one's pen as well as the cash out of one's purse.

  Herman Melville

  Money, Travel, Cash

  Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.148, Northwestern University Press

  6 Copy quote

• Genius is full of trash.

  Herman Melville

  Genius, Trash

  Herman Melville (2014). “Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II”, p.295, Trajectory Inc

  8 Copy quote

• Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.

  Herman Melville

  Islands, Maps, West

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.57

  4 Copy quote

• A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.

  Herman Melville

  Ocean, Generosity, Forests

  Herman Melville (1855). “Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile”, p.20

  36 Copy quote

• And what is it, thought I, after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Skins, Honest

  Herman Melville (2012). “Moby Dick (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.33, Jazzybee Verlag

  9 Copy quote

• Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted. And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean, are no measure of its power. In the present instance the stage is a scrubbed gun deck, and one of the external provocations a man-of-war's-man's spilled soup.

  Herman Melville

  War, Mean, Passion

  Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.177, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Wicked, Lambs

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.4898, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.

  Herman Melville

  Gay, Light, World

  Herman Melville (2016). “Bartleby, The Scrivener”, p.19, Herman Melville

  7 Copy quote

• Will you, or will you not, quit me? I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. "I would prefer not to quit you", he replied, gently emphasizing the not.

  Herman Melville

  Passion, Quitting, Advancing

  Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.42, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Land, Rivers

  Herman Melville (1852). “Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities”, p.145

  5 Copy quote

• Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.

  Herman Melville

  Ships, Students, Heavy

  Herman Melville (2012). “Moby Dick (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.509, Jazzybee Verlag

  5 Copy quote

• Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.

  Herman Melville

  Courage, Common, Virtue

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1690, Delphi Classics

  5 Copy quote

• Let us only hate hatred; and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Hate, Fall

  Herman Melville (1849). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.56

  45 Copy quote

• Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Rose, Bird

  Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.34, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.

  Herman Melville

  Selfish, Military, Men

  Herman Melville (1966). “Billy Budd”, p.14, Hayes Barton Press

  5 Copy quote

• When we affect to condemn savages, we should remember that by doing so we asperse our own progenitors; for they were savages also.Who can swear that among the naked British barbarians sent to Rome to be stared at more than 1500 years ago, the ancestor of Bacon might not have been found?--Why, among the very Thugs of India, or the bloody Dyaks of Borneo, exists the germ of all that is intellectually elevated and grand. We are all of us--Anglo-Saxons, Dyaks and Indians--sprung from one head and made in one image.

  Herman Melville

  Thug, Rome, Years

  4 Copy quote

• The grand points in human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them is in expression, not in feature.

  Herman Melville

  Expression, Years, Human Nature

  Herman Melville (1988). “The Confidence-man: His Masquerade”, p.464, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.

  Herman Melville

  Past, Victory, Hull

  Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.166, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.

  Herman Melville

  Men, World, May

  Herman Melville (2016). “Pierre; or The Ambiguities”, p.283, Herman Melville

  4 Copy quote

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