Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLEfor there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
More Herman Melville Quotes
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Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future 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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
You cannot hide the soul.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
There’s magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, no matter how comical.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
HERMAN MELVILLE