Source: Herman Melville The Dover Reader
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Famous Herman Melville Quotes
“Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?”
Source: Moby Dick
Source: Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
Source: Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities
“Immortality is but ubiquity in time.”
Source: Moby Dick
“The easiest way of life is the best.”
Source: Bartleby, The Scrivener
Source: Billy Budd and Other Tales
“Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.”
Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war
“The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.”
Source: Moby-Dick: World Classics
“Thou wine art the friend of the friendless, though a foe to all.”
Source: Mardi: and A Voyage Thither: Works of Melville
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“Leviathan is not the biggest fish; — I have heard of Krakens.”
Source: Correspondence
“Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.”
Source: Moby Dick
Source: Moby-Dick
Source: Mardi: And A Voyage Thither (Annotated Complete Edition)
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
Source: Moby Dick (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)
“Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!”
Source: Moby Dick
Source: Mardi: And A Voyage Thither (Annotated Complete Edition)
“Everyone knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything cooly is to do it genteelly.”
“To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.”
Source: Published Poems: The Writings of Herman Melville
“The terrors of truth and dart of death To faith alike are vain.”
Source: Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
Source: Selected Poems (Melville, Herman)
“The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.”
Source: Herman Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi
“Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.”
Source: Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].
Source: Moby Dick
Source: Moby-Dick
“Beware the People weeping When they bare the iron hand.”
Source: Selected Poems (Melville, Herman)
“Youth is immortal; Tis the elderly only grow old!”
Source: The Works of Herman Melville: Redburn
Source: Correspondence
Source: Billy Budd, Sailor
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?”