Best 579 quotes of Herman Melville on MyQuotes

Herman Melville

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    Herman Melville

    A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women.

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    Herman Melville

    A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

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    Herman Melville

    A chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving the host of the God of War--Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why, then, is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon; because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force.

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    Herman Melville

    A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wits' end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree around them.

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    Herman Melville

    A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.

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    Herman Melville

    A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

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    Herman Melville

    Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.

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    Herman Melville

    Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an unrealized ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope of bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we Christians ourselves disregard.

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    Herman Melville

    Aid my disillusionment, my friend!

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    Herman Melville

    All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.

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    Herman Melville

    All experience teaches that, whenever there is a great national establishment, employing large numbers of officials, the public must be reconciled to support many incompetent men; for such is the favoritism and nepotism always prevailing in the purlieus of these establishments, that some incompetent persons are always admitted, to the exclusion of many of the worthy.

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    Herman Melville

    all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.

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    Herman Melville

    All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

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    Herman Melville

    All of us have monarchs and sages for kinsmen; nay, angels and archangels for cousins; since in antediluvian days, the sons of God did verily wed with our mothers, the irresistible daughters of Eve. Thus all generations are blended: and heaven and earth of one kin: the hierarchies of seraphs in the uttermost skies; the thrones and principalities in the zodiac; the shades that roam throughout space; the nations and families, flocks and folds of the earth; one and all, brothers in essence-oh, be we then brothers indeed! All things form but one whole.

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    Herman Melville

    All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.

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    Herman Melville

    All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence... Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature. It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God.

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    Herman Melville

    All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

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    Herman Melville

    All the world over, the picturesque yields to the pocketesque.

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    Herman Melville

    All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.

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    Herman Melville

    All truth is profound.

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    Herman Melville

    All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.

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    Herman Melville

    All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, The champions and enthusiasts of the state: Turbid ardors and vain joys Not barrenly abate-- Stimulants to the power mature, Preparatives of fate.

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    Herman Melville

    All we discover has been with us since the sun began to roll; and much we discover, is not worth the discovering.

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    Herman Melville

    A man can be honest in any sort of skin.

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    Herman Melville

    A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.

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    Herman Melville

    ...a man of true science uses few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; Where as the smatterer in science...thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

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    Herman Melville

    And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of ; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone ; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

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    Herman Melville

    And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.

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    Herman Melville

    And tell him to paint me a sign, with-no suicides permitted here, and no smloing in the parlor; might as well kill both birds at once.

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    Herman Melville

    And the visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

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    Herman Melville

    And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.

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    Herman Melville

    An indiscriminate distrust of human nature is the worst consequence of a miserable condition, whether brought about by innocence or guilt. And though want of suspicion more than want of sense, sometimes leads a man into harm; yet too much suspicion is as bad as too little sense.

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    Herman Melville

    An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.

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    Herman Melville

    A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

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    Herman Melville

    An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

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    Herman Melville

    Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.

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    Herman Melville

    Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.

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    Herman Melville

    Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?

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    Herman Melville

    Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?

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    Herman Melville

    Art is the objectification of feeling.

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    Herman Melville

    As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing,never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright; and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.

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    Herman Melville

    As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

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    Herman Melville

    A ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.

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    Herman Melville

    Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle-a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness' sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy.

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    Herman Melville

    As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out; so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.

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    Herman Melville

    A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

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    Herman Melville

    As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.

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    Herman Melville

    At banquets surfeit not, but fill; partake, and retire; and eat not again till you crave.

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    Herman Melville

    A thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true.

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    Herman Melville

    At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.