The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
HERMAN MELVILLEThe only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
HERMAN MELVILLEGenius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
HERMAN MELVILLEIf you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
HERMAN MELVILLEThe worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
HERMAN MELVILLEI am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
HERMAN MELVILLEReal strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
HERMAN MELVILLEI cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, no matter how comical.
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.
HERMAN MELVILLEI love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
HERMAN MELVILLEMy body is but the lees of my better being.
HERMAN MELVILLEFaith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
HERMAN MELVILLEA smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
HERMAN MELVILLEBetter 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 MELVILLEThe 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 MELVILLEA book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf – at any rate it is safer from criticism.
HERMAN MELVILLELife’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.
HERMAN MELVILLE