Herman Melville - Typee (1846)

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For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men

Herman Melville
The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.

Herman Melville
Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the art of smoking.

Herman Melville
When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the "big canoe" of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the viper whose sting is destined to poison all their joys.

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
As I am no chemist, I cannot give a scientific analysis of the water.

Herman Melville
Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

Herman Melville
How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.

Herman Melville
Nature is an immaculate virgin, forever standing unrobed before us.

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
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 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
Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

Herman Melville
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