“That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia.”
Source: Moby-Dick
“We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.”
Source: Redburn
“It is plain and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankee, and operates differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton; ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old; but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“The man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.”
Source: Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
“The grand points in human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them is in expression, not in feature.”
Source: The Confidence-man: His Masquerade
“He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.”
Source: The Confidence-man: His Masquerade
“Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.”
Source: Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories
“It is against the will of God that the East should be Christianized.”
Source: Journals
“We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us?”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: White-jacket; Or, The World in the Man-of-war
“To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.”
Source: Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories
“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.”
Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war
“Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone; and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.”
Source: The Complete Novels of Herman Melville: Sea Tales, Maritime Adventures & Philosophical Novels: Moby-Dick, Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter, The Confidence-Man & Billy Budd, Sailor
“At banquets surfeit not, but fill; partake, and retire; and eat not again till you crave.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“One would like to know, what were foes made for except to be used?”
Source: Pierre; or The Ambiguities
“As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.”
Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war
“When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.”
Source: Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile
“flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.”
Source: Billy Budd and Other Tales
“Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.”
Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war
“There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues madethem great and noble. They possessed a natural majesty that was not put on and taken off at pleasure, as was that of certain eastern monarchs when they put on or took off their garments of Tyrian dye. It is hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility.”
Source: Tales, Poems, and Other Writings
“The shadows of things are greater than themselves; and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.”
Source: Mardi: and A Voyage Thither: Works of Melville
“Time is made up of various ages; and each thinks its own a novelty.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“For the profit of travel: in the first place, you get rid of a few prejudices.... The prejudiced against color finds several hundred millions of people of all shades of color, and all degrees of intellect, rank, and social worth, generals, judges, priests, and kings, and learns to give up his foolish prejudice.”
Source: Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition
“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.”
Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war
“I will live and die by this testimony: that I loved a good conscience; that I never invaded another man's liberty; and that I preserved my own.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.”
Source: Herman Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi
“Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.”
Source: Selected Poems (Melville, Herman)
“The earliest instinct of the child, and the ripest experience of age, unite in affirming simplicity to be the truest and profoundest part for man. Likewise this simplicity is so universal and all-containing as a rule for human life, that the subtlest bad man, and the purest good man, as well as the profoundest wise man, do all alike present it on that side which they socially turn to the inquisitive and unscrupulous world.”
Source: Pierre or The Ambiguities
“The so-called Transcendentalists are not the only people who deal in Transcendentals. On the contrary, we seem to see that the Utilitarians,--the every-day world's people themselves, far transcend those inferior Transcendentalists by their own incomprehensible worldly maxims.”
Source: Pierre: Or, the Ambiguities
“Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse,and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.”
Source: Redburn.His First Voyage
“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.”
Source: Israel Potter: Works of Melville
“A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.”
Source: Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile
“Great towers take time to construct.”
Source: Mardi: and A Voyage Thither: Works of Melville
“If you begin the day with a laugh, you may, nevertheless, end it with a sob and a sigh.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores;let us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have God's right to come.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“God is liberal of color; so should man be.”
Source: Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition
“I am sorry to say we whites have a sad reputation among many of the Polynesians. The natives of these islands are naturally of a kindly and hospitable temper, but there has been implanted among them an almost instinctive hate of the white man. They esteem us, with rare exceptions, such as some of the missionaries, the most barbarous, treacherous, irreligious, and devilish creatures on the earth.”
Source: Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition
“That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.”
Source: Pierre: Or, the Ambiguities
“Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber; a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.”
Source: Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, During a Four Months' Residence in the Valley of the Marquesas
“Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of common-placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve?”
Source: Pierre; or The Ambiguities
“Niggards are oftentimes neat.”
Source: Mardi: and A Voyage Thither: Works of Melville
“Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill; and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine; setting an eminent example to all mankind.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“The Navy is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate. Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)
“Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.”
Source: Works: Billy Budd, and other prose pieces, edited by R. W. Weaver
“It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement.”
Source: Herman Melville The Dover Reader
“Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.”
Source: Moby Dick, Or The Whale: Volume 6, Scholarly Edition
