Authors:

Herman Melville Quotes - Page 7

All Quotes Adversity Age Art Atheism Beauty Character Charity Children Christianity Cooking Country Courage Creativity Death Democracy Devil Doubt Earth Ego Evil Failure Fame Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Food Genius Giving God Greatness Greek Grief Happiness Hate Heart Heaven Home Honor Horror Human Nature Humanity Inspirational Joy Judging Knowledge Laughter Life Literature Love Lying Madness Memories Money Morning Mountain Nature Pain Past Prayer Prejudice Purpose Quality Reality Religion Running Sailing Silence Sin Skins Slavery Sleep Smoking Son Sorrow Soul Spring Success Suffering Summer Terror Travel Truth Virtue War Water Wife Wine Wisdom Work Writing Youth
Aid my disillusionment, my friend!

Aid my disillusionment, my friend!

Herman Melville
Sad, Aids, Disillusionment

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing

Herman Melville
Madness, Cunning, Feline
Herman Melville (2012). “Moby-Dick”, p.155, Courier Corporation

All the world over, the picturesque yields to the pocketesque.

Herman Melville
Art, Money, Yield
Herman Melville (1998). “Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales”, Oxford University Press, USA

Honor lies in the mane of a horse.

Herman Melville
Horse, Lying, Honor

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.

Herman Melville
Ocean, Night, Anchors
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.101

But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.

Herman Melville
Heart, Law, Long
Herman Melville (2009). “Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales”, p.259, OUP Oxford

In childhood, death stirred me not; in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road; now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.

Herman Melville
Death, Men, Childhood
Herman Melville (1855). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.347

You cannot hide the soul.

Herman Melville
Soul
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.52

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

Herman Melville
Men, Giving, Ships
Herman Melville (1850). “White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war”, p.115

Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle-a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness' sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy.

Herman Melville
Wise, Spiritual, Sweet
Herman Melville (1995). “Bartleby, the Scrivener: a Story of Wall-Street”, p.29, Lulu.com

Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty. Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale. Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal. Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness. Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation. Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway.

Herman Melville
Names, Oil, Water
Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.53, Velvet Element Books

One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocence self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.

Herman Melville
Depression, Dream, Thinking
Pierre bk. 4 (1852)

From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space.

Herman Melville
Stars, Heart, Space
Herman Melville (1852). “Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities”, p.67

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

Herman Melville
Passive Resistance, Earnest, Persons
1853 'Bartleby the Scrivener', in Putnam'sMonthly Magazine, Nov-Dec.

That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.

Herman Melville
Dog, Men, Rejection
Herman Melville (1996). “Pierre: or, The Ambiguities”, p.296, Penguin

Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.

Herman Melville
Evil, Humanity, Atheism
Herman Melville (1866). “Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].”, p.268

I try all things, I achieve what I can.

Herman Melville
Trying, Achieve, All Things
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.326

Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras.

Herman Melville
Judgement, Missionary, Enlightened
Herman Melville (2006). “Moby Dick, The Whale: Easyread Edition”, p.3, ReadHowYouWant.com

That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at differentperiods, as much at variance with itself as the caterpillar is with the butterfly into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.

Herman Melville
Butterfly, Character, Creativity
Herman Melville (1988). “The Confidence-man: His Masquerade”, p.70, Northwestern University Press

But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright son has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves. Because they have no memory . . . because they are not human.

Herman Melville
Memories, Son, Past
Herman Melville (1856). “The Piazza Tales”, p.267

Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

Herman Melville
Running, Hands, Circles
"Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1850)

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

Herman Melville
Beautiful, Lying, Reality
Herman Melville (2015). “Pierre or The Ambiguities: Works of Melville”, p.214, 谷月社

Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.

Herman Melville
Heart, Thinking, Brain
Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.622, Velvet Element Books

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

Herman Melville
Strong, Wall, Men
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.292

There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.

Herman Melville
Men, Pay
Herman Melville (1998). “Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales”, p.334, Oxford University Press, USA

You May Also Like: