You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world…. We are not a nation, so much as a world.
HERMAN MELVILLEA book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf – at any rate it is safer from criticism.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Art is the objectification of feeling.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Only the man who says no is free
HERMAN MELVILLE -
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Benevolent desires, after passing a certain point, can not undertake their own fulfillment without incurring the risk of evils beyond those sought to be remedied.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
HERMAN MELVILLE