Herman Melville Quotes - Page 20

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• Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.

  Herman Melville

  Heart, Whales, Sea

  Moby Dick ch. 135 (1851)

  10 Copy quote

• The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.

  Herman Melville

  Girl, Dance, Eye

  Herman Melville (1860). “Typee : a peep at polynesian life, during a four months residence in a valley of the Marquesas”, p.179

  7 Copy quote

• Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.

  Herman Melville

  Identity, Gone, Free Will

  Herman Melville (1852). “Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities”, p.239

  5 Copy quote

• If not against us, nature is not for us.

  Herman Melville

  Nature, Ifs

  Herman Melville (1849). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.246

  4 Copy quote

• Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.

  Herman Melville

  Heart, Heaven, Ships

  Herman Melville (2015). “Moby Dick: Top 100 Classic Novels”, p.257, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

• Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.

  Herman Melville

  Evil, Break, Malady

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

  4 Copy quote

• The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!

  Herman Melville

  God, Democracy, Divine

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, Walter E. Bezanson (1991). “Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land”, p.606, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace, amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a clew! Every age makes its own guide-books, and the old ones are used for waste paper.

  Herman Melville

  Father, Book, Age

  Herman Melville (1963). “Works: Redburn, his first voyage”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Civilization, Order, Literature

  Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.492, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Rome, Feelings

  Herman Melville (2001). “Tales, Poems, and Other Writings”

  4 Copy quote

• It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.

  Herman Melville

  Purpose, News, Literature

  Herman Melville (1924). “The works of Herman Melville”

  4 Copy quote

• I don't know but a book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf--at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel--you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety--& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Creativity, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure.

  Herman Melville

  Character, Towns, Novelists

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.3049, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes after.

  Herman Melville

  Women, Wife, Firsts

  Herman Melville (2016). “The Ambiguities”, p.17, Herman Melville

  4 Copy quote

• all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.

  Herman Melville

  Miserable, Sin, Bostonians

  Herman Melville (1963). “The Works of Herman Melville: Billy Budd, and other prose picecs”

  4 Copy quote

• In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Cities, Settling

  Herman Melville (2016). “Pierre or The Ambiguities”, p.277, Herman Melville

  4 Copy quote

• For my part I love sleepy fellows, and the more ignorant the better. Damn your wide-awake and knowing chaps. As for sleepiness, itis one of the noblest qualities of humanity. There is something sociable about it, too. Think of those sensible & sociable millions of good fellows all taking a good long friendly snooze together, under the sod--no quarrels, no imaginary grievances, no envies, heart-burnings, & thinking how much better that other chap is off--none of this: but all equally free-&-easy, they sleep away & reel off their nine knots an hour, in perfect amity.

  Herman Melville

  Death, Heart, Sleep

  4 Copy quote

• Love's secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to the transcendent and the infinite; and so they are as airy bridges, by which ourfurther shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations; whence all poetical, lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us, as though pearls should drop from rainbows.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Bridges, Rainbow

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.2384, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  War, Men, Air

  Herman Melville (1850). “White-jacket; Or, The World in the Man-of-war”, p.463

  4 Copy quote

• The dinner-hour is the summer of the day: full of sunshine, I grant; but not like the mellow autumn of supper.

  Herman Melville

  Summer, Sunshine, Autumn

  Herman Melville (1855). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.329

  5 Copy quote

• The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same the world over: and wherethese principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind.

  Herman Melville

  Honor, Mind, Principles

  Herman Melville (1968). “Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life”, p.201, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• There is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science,is but a passing fable.

  Herman Melville

  Character, Men, Egypt

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.2096, Delphi Classics

  8 Copy quote

• A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wits' end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree around them.

  Herman Melville

  Children, Father, Simple

  Herman Melville (2012). “Typee: A Romance of the South Seas (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.129, Jazzybee Verlag

  7 Copy quote

• Those peculiar social sensibilities nourished by our own peculiar political principles, while they enhance the true dignity of a prosperous American, do but minister to the added wretchedness of the unfortunate; first, by prohibiting their acceptance of what little random relief charity may offer; and, second, by furnishing them with the keenest appreciation of the smarting distinction between their ideal of universal equality and their grind-stone experience of the practical misery and infamy of poverty.

  Herman Melville

  Appreciation, Acceptance, Political

  Herman Melville (2012). “The Encantadas and Other Stories”, p.83, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains; and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.

  Herman Melville

  Brother, Freedom, Civilization

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle (1970). “Mardi and a Voyage Thither: Volulme Three, Scholarly Edition”, p.527, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

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