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Herman Melville Quotes - Page 14

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The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

Herman Melville
Fiction, Fables, Facts
Herman Melville, Douglas Robillard (2000). “The Poems of Herman Melville”, p.32, Kent State University Press

None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.

Herman Melville
Life, Death, Men

The pleasure of leaving home, care-free, with no concern but to enjoy, has also as a pendant the pleasure of coming back to the old hearthstone, the home to which, however traveled, the heart still fondly turns, ignoring the burden of its anxieties and cares.

Herman Melville
Travel, Home, Heart
Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.422, Northwestern University Press

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

Herman Melville
Fire, Giving, Woe
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.400

A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

Herman Melville
Men, Thinking, Laughing
Herman Melville (2015). “Annotated Moby Dick or, the Whale with English Grammar Exercises: by Herman Melville (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, p.40, Powell Publications, LLC

He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers,--it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.

Herman Melville
Success, Failure, Greatness
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Julian Hawthorne (2015). “Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of “The Scarlet Letter”, “The House of Seven Gables” and “Twice-Told Tales””, p.1775, e-artnow

If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.

Herman Melville
Prayer, Men, Might
Herman Melville (1852). “Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities”, p.7

The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food of thy body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters; and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be.

Herman Melville
Food, Light, Oysters
Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.299, Northwestern University Press

Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.

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

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.

Herman Melville
Ocean, Fate, Order
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.521

At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.

Herman Melville
Wine, Sea, Water
Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.346, Northwestern University Press

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
Order, Law, Winking
Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.2012, Delphi Classics

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
Heaven, Church, Trying
Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.4892, Delphi Classics

Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.

Herman Melville
Boys, Men, Remember
"The Complete Novels of Herman Melville".

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

Herman Melville
Money, Travel, Cash
Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.148, Northwestern University Press

The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head

Herman Melville
Games, Long, Sailing
Herman Melville (1962). “Billy Budd, Sailor”, p.83, University of Chicago Press

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.

Herman Melville
Islands, Maps, West
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.57

A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.

Herman Melville
Ocean, Generosity, Forests
Herman Melville (1855). “Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile”, p.20

And tell him to paint me a sign, with-no suicides permitted here, and no smloing in the parlor; might as well kill both birds at once.

Herman Melville
Suicide, Bird, Might
Herman Melville (2016). “Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale”, p.96, Cosimo, Inc.

Genius is full of trash.

Herman Melville
Genius, Trash
Herman Melville (2014). “Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II”, p.295, Trajectory Inc

Indolence is heaven 's ally here, And energy the child of hell : The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear But brims the poisoned well.

Herman Melville
Children, Men, Heaven
Herman Melville (1991). “Selected Poems of Herman Melville”, p.145, Fordham Univ Press

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.

Herman Melville
Expression, Years, Human Nature
Herman Melville (1988). “The Confidence-man: His Masquerade”, p.464, Northwestern University Press

When we affect to condemn savages, we should remember that by doing so we asperse our own progenitors; for they were savages also.Who can swear that among the naked British barbarians sent to Rome to be stared at more than 1500 years ago, the ancestor of Bacon might not have been found?--Why, among the very Thugs of India, or the bloody Dyaks of Borneo, exists the germ of all that is intellectually elevated and grand. We are all of us--Anglo-Saxons, Dyaks and Indians--sprung from one head and made in one image.

Herman Melville
Thug, Rome, Years

The friendship of fine-hearted, generous boys, nurtured amid the romance-engendering comforts and elegancies of life, sometimes transcends the bounds of mere boyishness, and revels for a while in the empyrean of a love which only comes short, by one degree, of the sweetest sentiment entertained between the sexes.

Herman Melville
Love, Friends, Sex
Herman Melville (2016). “Pierre; or The Ambiguities”, p.276, Herman Melville

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.

Herman Melville
Men, World, May
Herman Melville (2016). “Pierre; or The Ambiguities”, p.283, Herman Melville

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