Herman Melville Quotes

443 Sourced Quotes

I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself

Herman Melville
The terrors of truth and dart of death
To faith alike are vain.

Herman Melville
Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.

Herman Melville
A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

Herman Melville
In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, — even though it be covertly, and by snatches.

Herman Melville
Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Me thinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.

Herman Melville
How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair.

Herman Melville
Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.

Herman Melville
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.… Strike, strike through the mask!

Herman Melville
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

Herman Melville
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