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
Silence is the only Voice of our God.
—Herman Melville
Topics: God
Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Beauty
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
When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!
—Herman Melville
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
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
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Smile
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
He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Courage, Failures, Failure, Risk, Mistakes
Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!
—Herman Melville
Topics: Writers, Authors & Writing, Writing
‘I will have no man in my boat,’ said Starbuck, ‘who is not afraid of a whale.’ By this, he seemed to mean not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Bravery
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: Eating, Results
Prayer draws us near to our own souls.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Prayer
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
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Faith
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
We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Kindness
Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses,—for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it—not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Speech, Conversation
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.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Philosophy, Philosophers
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Creativity, Plagiarism, To Be Born Everyday, Originality
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
They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Leisure, Rest
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: Help, Assistance, Aid
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: Aging, Age
The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head.
—Herman Melville
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
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
—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
Topics: Madness
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
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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