Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLEWhatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Nature is nobody’s ally.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Aid my disillusionment, my friend!
HERMAN MELVILLE -
You know nothing till you know all; which is the reason we never know any thing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
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 -
What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, – for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it – not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Art is the objectification of feeling.
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 -
Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.
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 -
When the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Failure is the true test of greatness
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
HERMAN MELVILLE