Herman Melville (1819–91) was an American novelist, poet, and short-story writer. His experiences as a common sailor aboard whaling ships formed the basis of several novels, notably Moby Dick (1851.) His other notable works include Billy Budd (1924.)
Melville was born in New York City, and after an initial voyage to Liverpool as a cabin boy, he decided upon a life at sea. The wealth of experience that he gained during his many years sailing and visiting the exotic locales of the South Pacific became the basis of his literary work. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846,) a fictionalized travel narrative, was his first book; it was also his most famous book during his lifetime.
Melville was a critical and commercial failure during his lifetime. Today, Melville is ranked with the pantheon of writers of the American Renaissance period of the 1850s.
In 1866, Melville became a deputy customs inspector in New York. He held that post for the next 19 years and, for the most part, withdrew from public and literary life writing some poetry.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Herman Melville
I saw a ship of material build
(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)
Directed as by madness mere
Against a solid iceberg steer,
Nor budge it, though the infactuate ship went down.
The impact made huge ice-cubes fall
Sullen in tons that crashed the deck;
But that one avalanche was all—
No other movement save the foundering wreck.
Along the spurs of ridges pale,
Not any slenderest shaft and frail,
A prism over glass-green gorges lone,
Toppled; or lace or traceries fine,
Nor pendant drops in grot or mine
Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down.
Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled
Circling one snow-flanked peak afar,
But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed
And crystal beaches, felt no jar.
No thrill transmitted stirred the lock
Of jack-straw neddle-ice at base;
Towers indermined by waves—the block
Atilt impending—kept their place.
Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges
Slipt never, when by loftier edges
Through the inertia overthrown,
The impetuous ship in bafflement went down.
Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast,
With mortal damps self-overcast;
Exhaling still thy dankish breath—
Adrift dissolving, bound for death;
Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one—
A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,
Impingers rue thee ad go slow
Sounding thy precipice below,
Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls
Along thy dead indifference of walls.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Patience
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
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: Humanity, Humankind
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Drinking
They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Rest, Leisure
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: Conversation, Speech
Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!
—Herman Melville
Topics: Writing, Writers, Authors & Writing
He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Risk, Mistakes, Failure, Courage, Failures
Prayer draws us near to our own souls.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Prayer
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
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
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
—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: Eating, Results
Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter. To begin: there’s Aries, or the Ram—lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull—he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins—that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path—he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the virgin! that’s our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales—happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here’s the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.
—Herman Melville
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 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
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
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
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
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: Philosophers, Philosophy
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Smile
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
He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.
—Herman Melville
‘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
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
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
He offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Prayer
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
Silence is the only Voice of our God.
—Herman Melville
Topics: God
The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head
—Herman Melville
In our own hearts, we mold the whole world’s hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Heart
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
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Meditation
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: Oddity, Peculiarity
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: Grief, Work
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
So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
—Herman Melville
Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Home, One liners
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, Aid, Assistance
For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
—Herman Melville
Topics: Books, Literature
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