Herman Melville Quotes

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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.

Herman Melville
The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics.

Herman Melville
To certain temperaments, especially when previously agitated by any deep feeling, there is perhaps nothing more exasperating, andwhich sooner explodes all self-command, than the coarse, jeering insolence of a porter, cabman, or hack-driver.

Herman Melville
Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

Herman Melville
In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary?

Herman Melville
Mystery is in the morning, and mystery in the night, and the beauty of mystery is everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must be filled.

Herman Melville
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
It is against the will of God that the East should be Christianized.

Herman Melville
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.

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

Herman Melville
The so-called Transcendentalists are not the only people who deal in Transcendentals. On the contrary, we seem to see that the Utilitarians,--the every-day world's people themselves, far transcend those inferior Transcendentalists by their own incomprehensible worldly maxims.

Herman Melville
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
Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.

Herman Melville
The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.

Herman Melville
There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you mark a horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, make sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquility speculating upon the mysteries in man.

Herman Melville
What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?

Herman Melville
The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.

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

Herman Melville
Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of common-placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve?

Herman Melville
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
All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.

Herman Melville
Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.

Herman Melville
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
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
A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women.

Herman Melville
Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

Herman Melville
The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same the world over: and wherethese principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind.

Herman Melville
Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

Herman Melville
And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.

Herman Melville
What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.

Herman Melville