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Home
Authors
Herman Melville
American
Novelist
About the author
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Words
#Man
There are hardly five critics in America; and several of them are asleep.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#America
There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Dignity
#Democracy
#Hell
#Wickedness
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Nothing
#World
#Quality
#Contrast
There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#World
#Being
#Difference
There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Divinity
There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Future
#Order
#Laws
There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#World
#Being
#Mankind
#Proof
#Delight
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Life
#Man
#Universe
The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Love
#May
#Mind
#March
#Conquest
Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Will
#Trouble
#Poor
#Men
#Dying
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Life
#Death
#Man
#Old
#Age
Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Strength
#Faults
Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Children
#First
#America
#Land
#Excellence
#Praise
#Mediocrity
To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Heart
#Hell
#Hate
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Will
#Nothing
#Men
There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Soul
#Mystery
#Sea
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,
American
Novelist
#Want
#Man
#Wrong
#Help
#Deep
There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#World
#Sorrow
#Goodness
They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Talk
#Work
#Dignity
#Leisure
To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Compliment
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Nature
#states
#Quality
Truth is in things, and not in words.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Words
#Truth
Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Living
#Truth
#Sun
#Church
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Will
#Truth
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Men
Whatever fortune brings, don't be afraid of doing things.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Fortune
Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Work
#Art
#Old
#Living
#Wisdom
Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Man
#Sin
#Grief
#Idleness
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Christian
#Sleep
At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Respect
#Sea
#Water
#Wine
Art is the objectification of feeling.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Art
#Feeling
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#College
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Smile
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Hope
#Faith
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Talk
#Open
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,
American
Novelist
#Heart
#Race
#Hate
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Succeed
#Originality
#Imitation
He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Man
Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Habit
Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Heaven
#Mercy
Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Hope
#Soul
#Eternity
#Struggle
I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#World
#Virtue
#Sin
#Travel
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Christian
#Sleep
Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.
Herman Melville,
American
Novelist
#Love
#First
#Truth
#Sight
#Friendship