Herman Melville - Truth Quotes

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Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the truth—and go to the soup societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit banister.

Herman Melville
The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges...

Herman Melville
You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.

Herman Melville
In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.

Herman Melville
There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan. Yet the work of Reconstruction, if admitted to be feasible at all, demands little but common sense and Christian charity. Little but these? These are much.

Herman Melville
Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.

Herman Melville
The truth seems to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world, — at least, with respect to himself. Personally, I doubt not, that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to judge — that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public

Herman Melville
It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; — & to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this.

Herman Melville
The grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.

Herman Melville
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!

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

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

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