Herman Melville Quotes

443 Sourced Quotes

Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!

Herman Melville
Time is made up of various ages; and each thinks its own a novelty.

Herman Melville
Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.

Herman Melville
But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.

Herman Melville
The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

Herman Melville
The profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelop of the storm, and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion.

Herman Melville
An indiscriminate distrust of human nature is the worst consequence of a miserable condition, whether brought about by innocence or guilt. And though want of suspicion more than want of sense, sometimes leads a man into harm; yet too much suspicion is as bad as too little sense.

Herman Melville
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
In physical chemistry, as in other sciences, progress usually occurs by a series of rather discontinuous steps separated by periods of consolidation. Thus certain topics and branches of a subject become popular fields of activity once the pioneering work has defined the field of endeavor. Thereafter papers flow in ever-increasing numbers.

Herman Melville
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
Whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

Herman Melville
I present my credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals, and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts.

Herman Melville
The dinner-hour is the summer of the day: full of sunshine, I grant; but not like the mellow autumn of supper.

Herman Melville
While nature thus very early and very abundantly feeds us, she is very late in tutoring us as to the proper methodization of our diet.

Herman Melville
At banquets surfeit not, but fill; partake, and retire; and eat not again till you crave.

Herman Melville
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
Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.

Herman Melville
We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before; the world is not yet middle-aged.

Herman Melville
In placid hours well-pleased we dream Of many a brave unbodied scheme. But form to lend, pulsed life create, What unlike things must meet and mate: A flame to melt--a wind to freeze; Sad patience--joyous energies; Humility--yet pride and scorn; Instinct and study; love and hate; Audacity--reverence. These must mate, And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart, To wrestle with the angel--Art.

Herman Melville
Nothing may help or heal While Amor incensed remembers wrong.

Herman Melville
Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it.

Herman Melville
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
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
Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.

Herman Melville
It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.

Herman Melville
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
No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one- I mean a downright bumpkin dandy- a fellow that, in the dog-days of summer, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.

Herman Melville
To be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.

Herman Melville
There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.

Herman Melville
When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.

Herman Melville