Herman Melville Quotes

443 Sourced Quotes

There is no place but the universe; no limit but the limitless; no bottom but the bottomless.

Herman Melville
In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.

Herman Melville
All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.

Herman Melville
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
Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.

Herman Melville
Nature is good Queen Bess; but who's responsible for the cholera?

Herman Melville
Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.

Herman Melville
It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.

Herman Melville
"Hold!" cried Media, "yonder is a curious rock. It looks black as a whale's hump in blue water, when the sun shines." "That must be the Isle of Fossils," said Mohi. "Ay, my lord, it is." "Let us land, then," said Babbalanja.

Herman Melville
In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, cursesmix with tears; and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own.

Herman Melville
Were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged.

Herman Melville
The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.

Herman Melville
Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes after.

Herman Melville
An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

Herman Melville
It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.

Herman Melville
The pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bearthe earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invokedfor favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

Herman Melville
Flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.

Herman Melville
Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

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

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

Herman Melville