The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Survival
He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Failures, Courage, Mistakes, Failure, Risk
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Censorship
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Smile
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 cozy, loving pair.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Sleep
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
Topics: Humanity
Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!
—Herman Melville
Topics: Writers, Writing, Authors & Writing
Prayer draws us near to our own souls.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Prayer
In glades they meet skull after skull
Where pine cones lay-the rusted gun,
Green shoes full of bones, the mouldering coat
And cuddled up skeleton;
And scores of such. Some start as in dreams,
And comrades lost bemoan;
By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged-
But the year and the Man were gone.
—Herman Melville
Topics: War
For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swanlike sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Sadness
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
Topics: Work, Grief
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises… the best excellence in the children of any other land.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Patriotism
He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.
—Herman Melville
People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day’s work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably—why, then I don’t think I deserve any reward for my hard day’s work—for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?
—Herman Melville
Topics: Results, Eating
For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Literature, Books
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Originality, Creativity, Plagiarism, To Be Born Everyday
He offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Prayer
Challenge The challenge is not to win, but to conquer the fear. It is not the other people you have to beat, it is your self.
—Herman Melville
There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Assistance, Help, Aid
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
—Herman Melville
The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Live-now
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
Topics: Peculiarity, Oddity
It is not down in any map, true places never are.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Truth
I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Humanity
A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Obedience
Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Humankind, Humanity
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Drinking
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Meditation
Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.
—Herman Melville
Topics: One liners, Home
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Age, Aging
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Langston Hughes American Poet, Writer
- Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
- Ken Kesey American Novelist
- David Foster Wallace American Novelist, Essayist
- William S. Burroughs American Novelist
- Reynolds Price American Novelist
- Barbara Kingsolver American Novelist, Essayist
- Ray Bradbury American Science-Fiction Writer
- Kurt Vonnegut American Novelist
- Robert A. Heinlein American Science Fiction Writer
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