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Herman Melville Quotes - Page 21

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Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure.

Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure.

Herman Melville
Character, Towns, Novelists
Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.3049, Delphi Classics

Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an unrealized ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope of bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we Christians ourselves disregard.

Herman Melville
Christian, War, Men
Herman Melville (1850). “White-jacket; Or, The World in the Man-of-war”, p.378

We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us?

Herman Melville
Afterlife, Heaven, May
Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1380, Delphi Classics

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.

Herman Melville
Numbers, Human Nature, Poor
Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.109, Penguin

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

Herman Melville
Men, Balance, World
Herman Melville, Mary R. Reichardt (2011). “Moby-Dick”, p.654, Ignatius Press

He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.

Herman Melville
Appreciation, Past, Light
Herman Melville (1988). “The Confidence-man: His Masquerade”, p.464, Northwestern University Press

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.

Herman Melville
Mother, Father, World
Herman Melville (2010). “Redburn”, p.224, Modern Library

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

Herman Melville
Believe, Devil, Foreheads
Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.178, Penguin

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.

Herman Melville
Lying, Book, Giving
Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.481, Velvet Element Books

Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.

Herman Melville
Evil, Break, Malady
Herman Melville (2012). “Mardi: And A Voyage Thither (Annotated Complete Edition)”, p.439, Jazzybee Verlag

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.

Herman Melville
Yankees, Fog, Doe
Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1232, Delphi Classics

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.

Herman Melville
Character, Men, Skulls
Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle (1988). “Moby Dick, Or The Whale: Volume 6, Scholarly Edition”, p.349, Northwestern University Press

...a man of true science uses few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; Where as the smatterer in science...thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

Herman Melville
Men, Thinking, Purpose

God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

Herman Melville
Heart, Men, Thinking
Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.224, Velvet Element Books

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.

Herman Melville
Heart, Whales, Sea
Moby Dick ch. 135 (1851)

all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.

Herman Melville
Miserable, Sin, Bostonians
Herman Melville (1963). “The Works of Herman Melville: Billy Budd, and other prose picecs”

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.

Herman Melville
Dog, Fighting, Animal
Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.327, Velvet Element Books

I never fancied broiling fowls; - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.

Herman Melville
Cooking, Fowl, Speak
Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1781, Delphi Classics

So long as a man-of-war exists, it must ever remain a picture of much that is tyrannical and repelling in human nature.

Herman Melville
War, Men, Long
Herman Melville (1850). “White-jacket; Or, The World in the Man-of-war”, p.247

I will frankly confess that after passing a few weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of- war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.

Herman Melville
War, Men, Valleys

And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of ; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone ; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

Herman Melville
Real, College, Men
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.108

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.

Herman Melville
Heart, Heaven, Ships
Herman Melville (2015). “Moby Dick: Top 100 Classic Novels”, p.257, 谷月社

Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from that same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.

Herman Melville
Men, Moon, Saturn
Herman Melville (2016). “Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale”, p.373, Cosimo, Inc.

If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing.

Herman Melville
Eye, Heart, Men
Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.108, Velvet Element Books

There are hardly five critics in America; and several of them are asleep.

Herman Melville
America, Critics, Five
Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.681, Northwestern University Press

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