Herman Melville Quotes

Nothing can lift the heart of man like manhood in a fellow man.

This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders.

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

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

Never joke at funerals, or during business transactions.

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.

It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.

Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.

As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.

Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!

It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.

Mystery is in the morning, and mystery in the night, and the beauty of mystery is everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must be filled.

But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought. Again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet that angel must hang!

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

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.

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.

When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.

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.

We die, because we live.

While nature thus very early and very abundantly feeds us, she is very late in tutoring us as to the proper methodization of our diet.

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.

The terrors of truth and dart of death To faith alike are vain.

Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, as well as philanthropists toward the blacks our fellow-men. In all things, and toward all, we are enjoined to do as we would be done by.

Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.

He who goes oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.

Thou wine art the friend of the friendless, though a foe to all.

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.

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.

When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.

A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women.

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

I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil. (Ego baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli.)

Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.

God is liberal of color; so should man be.

Implacable I, the implacable Sea; Implacable most when most I smile serene- Pleased, not appeased, by myriad wrecks in me.

Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.

Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber; a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.

But the might-have-been is but boggy ground to build upon.

But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.

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.

I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself

Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.

Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.

...in certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.

In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary?

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

For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who "believe and tremble" has one.