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Herman Melville Quotes - Page 16

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Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted. And the

Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted. And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean, are no measure of its power. In the present instance the stage is a scrubbed gun deck, and one of the external provocations a man-of-war's-man's spilled soup.

Herman Melville
War, Mean, Passion
Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.177, Penguin

And what is it, thought I, after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.

Herman Melville
Men, Skins, Honest
Herman Melville (2012). “Moby Dick (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.33, Jazzybee Verlag

For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants . . .

Herman Melville
Girl, Home, Dancing
Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.137, Velvet Element Books

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.

Herman Melville
History, May, Individual
Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.165, Penguin

Of all insults, the temporary condescension of a master to a slave is the most outrageous and galling. That potentate who most condescends, mark him well; for that potentate, if occasion come, will prove your uttermost tyrant.

Herman Melville
Tyrants, Insult, Slave
Herman Melville (1970). “White-jacket: Or, The World in a Man-of-war”, p.276, Northwestern University Press

I am sorry to say we whites have a sad reputation among many of the Polynesians. The natives of these islands are naturally of a kindly and hospitable temper, but there has been implanted among them an almost instinctive hate of the white man. They esteem us, with rare exceptions, such as some of the missionaries, the most barbarous, treacherous, irreligious, and devilish creatures on the earth.

Herman Melville
Sorry, Hate, Men
Herman Melville (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.415, Northwestern University Press

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.

Herman Melville
Dog, Eye, Wish

In the operative opinion of the world, he who is already fully provided with what is necessary for him, that man shall have more;while he who is deplorably destitute of the same, he shall have taken away from him even that which he hath. Yet the world vows it is a very plain, downright matter-of-fact, plodding, humane sort of world.

Herman Melville
Taken, Men, World
Herman Melville (2016). “Pierre; or The Ambiguities”, p.332, Herman Melville

That nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is contemporary with the courtship, and precedes the final banns and the rite; but which, like the bouquet of the costliest German wines, too often evaporates upon pouring love out to drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and nights.

Herman Melville
Love, Marriage, Wine

And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.

Herman Melville
Taken, Self, May
Herman Melville (1857). “The Confidence-man: His Masquerade”, p.24

O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.

Herman Melville
Men, Soul, Mind
Herman Melville (2012). “Moby Dick (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.339, Jazzybee Verlag

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.

Herman Melville
Men, Events, Deeds
1851 Captain Ahab. Moby Dick, ch.36.

The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original; the only original author being God.

Herman Melville
God, Men, Forever
Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.259, Northwestern University Press

The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head--no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.

Herman Melville
Moving, Games, Long
Herman Melville (2009). “Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales”, p.282, OUP Oxford

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!

Herman Melville
Lonely, Stars, Memories
Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.138, Velvet Element Books

The western spirit is, or will yet be (for no other is, or can be) the true American one.

Herman Melville
America, Spirit, Western
Herman Melville (2015). “Israel Potter: Works of Melville”, p.146, 谷月社

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.

Herman Melville
Whales, Three, Records
Herman Melville (2016). “Herman Melville The Dover Reader”, p.297, Courier Dover Publications

O Death, the Consecrator! Nothing so sanctifies a name As to be written--Dead. Nothing so wins a life from blame, So covers it from wrath and shame, As doth the burial-bed.

Herman Melville
Death, Winning, Names

There is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science,is but a passing fable.

Herman Melville
Character, Men, Egypt
Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.2096, Delphi Classics

A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wits' end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree around them.

Herman Melville
Children, Father, Simple
Herman Melville (2012). “Typee: A Romance of the South Seas (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.129, Jazzybee Verlag

There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues madethem great and noble. They possessed a natural majesty that was not put on and taken off at pleasure, as was that of certain eastern monarchs when they put on or took off their garments of Tyrian dye. It is hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility.

Herman Melville
Taken, Humility, Greatness
Herman Melville (2001). “Tales, Poems, and Other Writings”

But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!

Herman Melville
Land, Safety, Infinite
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.104

A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.

Herman Melville
Military, Self, Monk
Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.190, Penguin

All we discover has been with us since the sun began to roll; and much we discover, is not worth the discovering.

Herman Melville
Discovery, Sun, Discovering
Herman Melville (1849). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.299

Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone; and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.

Herman Melville
Indulge In, Enemy, Cannibalism
Herman Melville (2017). “The Complete Novels of Herman Melville: Sea Tales, Maritime Adventures & Philosophical Novels: Moby-Dick, Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter, The Confidence-Man & Billy Budd, Sailor”, p.175, e-artnow

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