Herman Melville Quotes - Page 9

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• All of us have monarchs and sages for kinsmen; nay, angels and archangels for cousins; since in antediluvian days, the sons of God did verily wed with our mothers, the irresistible daughters of Eve. Thus all generations are blended: and heaven and earth of one kin: the hierarchies of seraphs in the uttermost skies; the thrones and principalities in the zodiac; the shades that roam throughout space; the nations and families, flocks and folds of the earth; one and all, brothers in essence-oh, be we then brothers indeed! All things form but one whole.

  Herman Melville

  Daughter, Mother, Cousin

  Herman Melville (2012). “Mardi: And A Voyage Thither (Annotated Complete Edition)”, p.21, Jazzybee Verlag

  6 Copy quote

• Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Doubt, Atheism

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.181, Velvet Element Books

  28 Copy quote

• Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the "very best society" that this world can furnish, without the intolerable infliction of "dressing" to go into it. In your shabbiest coat and cosiest slippers you may socially chat even with the fastidious Earl of Chesterfield, and lounging under a tree enjoy the divinest intimacy with my late lord of Verulam.

  Herman Melville

  Reading, Book, Men

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.4516, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

• Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?

  Herman Melville

  Ignorant, Half, Action

  Herman Melville, Tyrus Hillway (1973). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.380, Rowman & Littlefield

  7 Copy quote

• Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'

  Herman Melville

  Men, Thinking, Cannibal

  Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.193, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!

  Herman Melville

  Book, Cash, May

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.159, Velvet Element Books

  7 Copy quote

• Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

  Herman Melville

  Stars, Moving, Heart

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby Dick (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.370, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, War, Expectations

  Herman Melville (1866). “Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].”, p.272

  4 Copy quote

• Climate of Egypt in winter is the reign of spring upon earth, & summer in the air, and tranquility in the heat.

  Herman Melville

  Summer, Spring, Winter

  Herman Melville, Howard C. Horsford, Lynn Horth (1989). “Journals”, p.77, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• He says NO! In thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.

  Herman Melville

  Devil, Baggage, Thunder

  1851 Of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  7 Copy quote

• At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so sound before

  Herman Melville

  Hands, Sound, Volume

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle (1969). “Redburn: Works of Herman Melville Volume Four”, p.87, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.

  Herman Melville

  Food, Ideas, Apples

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.86

  16 Copy quote

• Niggards are oftentimes neat.

  Herman Melville

  Niggard, Neat, Neatness

  Herman Melville (2015). “Mardi: and A Voyage Thither: Works of Melville”, p.219, 谷月社

  13 Copy quote

• Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters.

  Herman Melville

  Branches, Twigs, Chapters

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.275

  8 Copy quote

• It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.

  Herman Melville

  Ties, Religion, Fiction

  Herman Melville (2015). “The Confidence-Man: Works of Melville”, p.171, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

• The world's a ship on its voyage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

  Herman Melville

  Religion, World, Voyages

  6 Copy quote

• Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.

  Herman Melville

  Fighting, Fire, Years

  Herman Melville (2009). “Billy Budd and Other Tales”, p.73, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

  Herman Melville

  Believe, Men, Roots

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby Dick (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.5, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

  4 Copy quote

• The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn.

  Herman Melville

  Giving, Promise, Way

  Herman Melville (1866). “Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].”, p.148

  4 Copy quote

• Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.

  Herman Melville

  Littles, Should, Suspicious

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1578, Delphi Classics

  12 Copy quote

• We die of too much life.

  Herman Melville

  Life, Death, Too Much

  Herman Melville (1855). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.315

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Ideas, Rude

  4 Copy quote

• The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.

  Herman Melville

  Civilization, Race, Unhappy

  Herman Melville (1982). “Herman Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi”, p.230, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

• God is liberal of color; so should man be.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Color, Should

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.423, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• The stillness of the calm is awful. His voice begins to grow strange and portentous. He feels it in him like something swallowed too big for the esophagus. It keeps up a sort of involuntary interior humming in him, like a live beetle. His cranium is a dome full of reverberations. The hollows of his very bones are as whispering galleries. He is afraid to speak loud, lest he be stunned; like the man in the bass drum.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Voice, Whispering

  Herman Melville (1849). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.21

  4 Copy quote

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