Herman Melville Quotes

443 Sourced Quotes

The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.

Herman Melville
The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.

Herman Melville
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

Herman Melville
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.

Herman Melville
For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;—nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.

Herman Melville
At the height of their madness
The night winds pause,
Recollecting themselves;
But no lull in these wars.

Herman Melville
In war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal punishment decreed by a drum-head court — on the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the General — follows without delay on the heel of conviction without appeal.

Herman Melville
Dolt & ass that I am I have lived more than 29 years, & until a few days ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William. Ah, he's full of sermons-on-the-mount, and gentle, aye, almost as Jesus. I take such men to be inspired. I fancy that this moment Shakspeare in heaven ranks with Gabriel, Raphael and Michael. And if another Messiah ever comes twill be in Shakesper's person. — I am mad to think how minute a cause has prevented me hitherto from reading Shakspeare. But until now, every copy that was come-atable to me, happened to be in a vile small print unendurable to my eyes which are tender as young sparrows. But chancing to fall in with this glorious edition, I now exult in it, page after page.

Herman Melville
The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.

Herman Melville
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

Herman Melville
Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.

Herman Melville
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
Ha, ha, my ship! Thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of the sun.

Herman Melville
Dies, all dies!
The grass it dies, but in vernal rain Up it springs and it lives again;
Over and over, again and again It lives, it dies and it lives again.

Herman Melville
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
Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.

Herman Melville
Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?

Herman Melville
The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.

Herman Melville
Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains; and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.

Herman Melville
Life or death, weal or woe, the sun stays not his course. Oh: over battlefield and bower; over tower, and town, he speeds, — peers in at births, and death-beds; lights up cathedral, mosque, and pagan shrine; — laughing over all; — a very Democritus in the sky; and in one brief day sees more than any pilgrim in a century's round.

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

Herman Melville
One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.

Herman Melville
To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.

Herman Melville
Everyone knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything cooly is to do it genteelly.

Herman Melville
The shadows of things are greater than themselves; and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.

Herman Melville
The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food of thy body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters; and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be.

Herman Melville
I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination.

Herman Melville
Thou wine art the friend of the friendless, though a foe to all.

Herman Melville