Herman Melville Quotes
To be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
The western spirit is, or will yet be (for no other is, or can be) the true American one.
We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
It is plain and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankee, and operates differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton; ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle.
The man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.
We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us?
In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
The Navy is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate. Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin.
The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.
Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse,and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.
Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.
It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there.
No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.
The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!
We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow: and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound.
Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
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.
In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.
I could...see in Emerson...that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.
Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.
We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling.
In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.
This divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror.
Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.
Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure.
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.
all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.
Of the quaking recruit, three pitched battles make a grim grenadier; and he who shrank from the muzzle of a cannon, is now ready to yield his mustache for a sponge.
How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.
If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so sound before
Climate of Egypt in winter is the reign of spring upon earth, & summer in the air, and tranquility in the heat.
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.
It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.