Herman Melville Quotes
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.
Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
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.
Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.
War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.
It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
Let us only hate hatred; and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
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.
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.
Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory - the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have out paper allegories but ill comprehended.
