“Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.”
Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war
“The world's a ship on its voyage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.”
“Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.”
Source: Pierre; or The Ambiguities
“Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.”
Source: Redburn.His First Voyage
“It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.”
Source: The Confidence-Man: Works of Melville
“The names of all fine authors are fictitious ones, far more so than that of Junius,--simply standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding Spirit of all Beauty, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“The only ugliness is that of the heart, seen through the face. And though beauty be obvious, the only loveliness is invisible.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women.”
Source: Pierre; or The Ambiguities
“beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it; tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.”
Source: The Complete Works of Herman Melville: Adventure Classics, Sea Tales, Philosophical Works, Short Stories, Poetry & Essays: Moby-Dick, Typee, Omoo, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, John Marr and Other Sailors…
“One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.”
Source: Bartleby, The Scrivener
“While nature thus very early and very abundantly feeds us, she is very late in tutoring us as to the proper methodization of our diet.”
Source: Pierre; or The Ambiguities
“Boy, take my advice, and never try to invent any thing but--happiness.”
Source: Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition
“Of the quaking recruit, three pitched battles make a grim grenadier; and he who shrank from the muzzle of a cannon, is now ready to yield his mustache for a sponge.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“He who is ready to despair in solitary peril, plucks up a heart in the presence of another. In a plurality of comrades is much countenance and consolation.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“Let us only hate hatred; and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.”
Source: Mardi: And A Voyage Thither (Annotated Complete Edition)
“In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, cursesmix with tears; and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own.”
Source: THE TALES OF THE SEA - Premium Collection: 10 Maritime Novels & Adventure Classics in One Volume: Moby-Dick, Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White-Jacket, Israel Potter, Billy Budd, Sailor, Benito Cereno & The Encantadas (Based on the Author's Experiences on a Cargo Ship & US Navy Service)
“If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.”
Source: Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories
“A thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true.”
Source: Mardi: And A Voyage Thither (Annotated Complete Edition)
“All truth is profound.”
Source: Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
“It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.”
Source: The Ambiguities
“At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.”
Source: Correspondence
“We die of too much life.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“We die, because we live.”
Source: Romances of Herman Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Mopby-Dick, White-jacket, Israel Potter, Redburn
“Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the "very best society" that this world can furnish, without the intolerable infliction of "dressing" to go into it. In your shabbiest coat and cosiest slippers you may socially chat even with the fastidious Earl of Chesterfield, and lounging under a tree enjoy the divinest intimacy with my late lord of Verulam.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“You know nothing till you know all; which is the reason we never know any thing.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; The Future is both hope and fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future is 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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“All the world over, the picturesque yields to the pocketesque.”
Source: Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales
“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”
Source: Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition
“If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.”
Source: Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities
“all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.”
Source: The Works of Herman Melville: Billy Budd, and other prose picecs
“Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes after.”
Source: The Ambiguities
“It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.”
Source: Pierre: Or, the Ambiguities
“The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original; the only original author being God.”
Source: Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition
“Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.”
Source: Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life
“That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at differentperiods, as much at variance with itself as the caterpillar is with the butterfly into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.”
Source: The Confidence-man: His Masquerade
“Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.”
Source: Published Poems: The Writings of Herman Melville
“I don't know but a book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf--at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel--you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety--& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.”
“It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.”
Source: The Works of Herman Melville
“I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination.”
Source: Tales, Poems, and Other Writings
“The further our civilization advances upon its present lines so much the cheaper sort of thing does "fame" become, especially of the literary sort. This species of "fame" a waggish acquaintance says can be manufactured to order, and sometimes is so manufactured.”
Source: Correspondence
“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.”
Source: Pierre; or The Ambiguities
“Nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace, amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a clew! Every age makes its own guide-books, and the old ones are used for waste paper.”
Source: Works: Redburn, his first voyage
“In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.”
Source: Pierre or The Ambiguities
“Climate of Egypt in winter is the reign of spring upon earth, & summer in the air, and tranquility in the heat.”
Source: Journals
“He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers,--it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“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.”
Source: Pierre or The Ambiguities: Works of Melville
“For my part I love sleepy fellows, and the more ignorant the better. Damn your wide-awake and knowing chaps. As for sleepiness, itis one of the noblest qualities of humanity. There is something sociable about it, too. Think of those sensible & sociable millions of good fellows all taking a good long friendly snooze together, under the sod--no quarrels, no imaginary grievances, no envies, heart-burnings, & thinking how much better that other chap is off--none of this: but all equally free-&-easy, they sleep away & reel off their nine knots an hour, in perfect amity.”
