Quotessence
Home / Topics / Melville Quotes

Melville Quotes

Browse 36 quotes about Melville.

Melville Quotes

“It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”

DeathHellLoversAbrahamPiratesInfidelMelvilleMoby DickAhabHerman Melville
Book:Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Create image

“To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving’s to Truman Capote’s, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation’s literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan’s salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge.”

FailureSuicideNew York CityHopelessnessBrooklynManhattanMelvilleBankruptWalt WhitmanBrooklyn BridgeHerman MelvilleWhitmanEast RiverJacob M Appel
Book:The Biology of Luck
Create image

“e siano maledette tutte le cose che fanno innalzare gli occhi dell’uomo a quel cielo, che può solo bruciarlo col suo ardente splendore, come questi vecchi occhi sono bruciati, anche adesso, dalla tua luce, o sole! Gli sguardi degli occhi dell’uomo sono livellati dalla natura all’orizzonte di questa terra; non saettano dalla sommità della testa, come sarebbe stato se se Dio avesse inteso fargli fissare il firmamento.”

CieloMelvilleSguardo
Author:Melville, Henry
Create image

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.”

SailorSea StoriesMelville
Book:Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Create image

“As we still ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the tower serially disposed in order of their magnitude: gannets, black and speckled haglets, jays, sea hens, sperm-whale birds, gulls of all varieties -- thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another in senatorial array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated fly in a great piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary's chicken sounds his continual challenge and alarm.”

MelvilleSeabirdsHermanEncantadasGalopagos
Book:Encatadas
Create image

“The heroic and often tragic stories of American whalemen were renowned. They sailed the world’s oceans and brought back tales filled with bravery, perseverance, endurance, and survival. They mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, sang, spun yarns, scrimshawed, and recorded their musings and observations in journals and letters. They survived boredom, backbreaking work, tempestuous seas, floggings, pirates, putrid food, and unimaginable cold. Enemies preyed on them in times of war, and competitors envied them in times of peace. Many whalemen died from violent encounters with whales and from terrible miscalculations about the unforgiving nature of nature itself. And through it all, whalemen, those “iron men in wooden boats” created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories that can still stir our emotions and animate the most primal part of our imaginations. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme,” proclaimed Herman Melville, and the epic story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history.”

HistoryOceanAmerican HistoryWhalesMelvilleWhaleMoby DickWhalingHarpoon
Book:Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America
Create image

“Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self. Only he would never quite put the knife in the heart of his paradisal ideal. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, love should be a fulfillment, and life should be a thing of bliss. That was his fixed ideal. Fata Morgana. That was the pin he tortured himself on, like a pinned-down butterfly.”

WorldShouldHeartSelfFightingIdealsFulfillmentFixedBlissKnivesButterflyNever QuitPinsMelvilleMorgana
Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
Create image

“The bible is very resonant. It has everything, creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the bible and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan. Of course there are stories that are still relevant and inspiring; lessons that need to be taught over and over again. And they give people hope.”

PeopleNeedsGivingStillsStoriesCoursesSacrificeCreationTaughtLessonsBetrayalLustGreat ThingsRealisingRelevantBobProphecyDylanGreat WritersMelville
Author:Patti Smith
Create image

“I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets. The war took care of that for me. You know, I was brought up strictly kosher, but I - it made no sense to me. It made no sense to me what was happening. So nothing of it means anything to me. Nothing. Except these few little trivial things that are related to being Jewish. ... You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.”

KnowsBelieveMeanLittlesPersonsMadeWarCareI BelieveReligiousWonderfulRegretHappeningsI Believe InRelatedEmilyReligious PersonTrivial ThingsMelvilleKosher
Author:Maurice Sendak
Create image

“Here we observe the basic obsessive fantasy of Žižek's position: do nothing, sit still, prefer not to, like Melville's Bartleby, and silently dream of a ruthless violence, a consolidation of state power into one man's hands, an act of brutal physical force of which you are the object or the subject or both at once.”

MenStillsStatesDreamHandsForceFantasyViolenceSubjectsPositionObjectsOne ManBrutalRuthlessObsessivePhysical ForceConsolidationMelville
Author:Simon Critchley
Create image

“The great American writer Herman Melville says somewhere in The White Whale that a man ought to be 'a patriot to heaven,' and I believe it is a good thing, this ambition to be a cosmopolitan, this idea to be citizens not of a small parcel of the world that changes according to the currents of politics, according to the wars, to what occurs, but to feel that the whole world is our country.”

MenWorldFeelsBelieveIdeasWarCountryWholeI BelieveHeavenWhiteOughtCitizensAmbitionGood ThingsCurrentsWhole WorldOur CountryPatriotWhalesGreat AmericanParcelAmerican WriterMelville
Author:Jorge Luis Borges
Create image

“IN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION: WHAT SCENES ONE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE FILMED Shakespeare in the part of the King's Ghost. The beheading of Louis the Sixteenth, the drums drowning his speech on the scaffold. Herman Melville at breakfast, feeling a sardine to his cat. Poe's wedding. Lewis Carroll's picnics. The Russians leaving Alaska, delighted with the deal. Shot of a seal applauding.”

FeelingsAnswersDealsKingsSceneSpeechShotsCatLeavingGhostBreakfastDrowningDelightedAlaskaSealsPicnicsMelvilleSardines
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
Create image

“Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can’t explain — I don’t need to. I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I’m here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer.”

IfsKnowsNeedsBelieveHeartArtI CanPurposeI BelieveWalksAnimalRoomsMy HeartEgoSalvationNotesI Believe InWoodsObserversEmilyConjunctionsWild ThingsMelvilleWalk In The Woods
Author:Maurice Sendak
Create image

“In many college English courses the words “myth” and “symbol” are given a tremendous charge of significance. You just ain’t no good unless you can see a symbol hiding, like a scared gerbil, under every page. And in many creative writing course the little beasts multiply, the place swarms with them. What does this Mean? What does that Symbolize? What is the Underlying Mythos? Kids come lurching out of such courses with a brain full of gerbils. And they sit down and write a lot of empty pomposity, under the impression that that’s how Melville did it.”

WritingMeanLittlesDoeKidsCoursesGivenBrainCreativeCollegePagesEmptyDown AndScaredMythImpressionSymbolsBeastSignificanceHidingCreative WritingSwarmsMelvillePomposity
Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
Create image

“Herman Melville is not comforting. Emily Dickinson isn’t either. Maybe their work is too hungry for comfort, or just too vivid for comfort. But Henry James is – profoundly so. Because he is tender. The tenderness is there in the structure of the sentence. He knows the way the poor and the dead are forgotten by the living, and he cannot allow that to happen. So he keeps on writing for them, for the dead, as if they were children to be sheltered and loved, never abandoned.”

IfsKnowsWayWritingChildrenHappensPoorComfortStructureForgottenSentencesHungryAbandonedTendernessComfortingVividEmilyMelville
Author:Susan Howe
Create image

“Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning”

MeanImportantCharacterHandsTodayLanguageAliveApproachCreatingLettersLet MeDepthClarityRepeatsProseGenesEnglish LanguageBrillianceLive For TodayDickensStylistClarity Of ThoughtMelvilleCreating Characters
Author:Michael Swanwick
Create image