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 MELVILLEAll round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter’s ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
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 -
Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.
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 -
Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
HERMAN MELVILLE -
My body is but the lees of my better being.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Art is the objectification of feeling.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Aid my disillusionment, my friend!
HERMAN MELVILLE -
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
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 -
Truth is in things, and not in words.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, no matter how comical.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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 -
All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do–remember that–and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter’s ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.
HERMAN MELVILLE