Quotes by Herman Melville

About Herman Melville:

Herman Melville is probably its heavy allusiveness, a reflection of his use of written sources. Melville's way of adapting what he read for his own new purposes, scholar Stanley T. Williams wrote, "was a transforming power comparable to Shakespeare's".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.

Herman Melville

I would prefer not to.

Herman Melville

Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty ...

Herman Melville

Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.

Herman Melville

At last I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you with office-room for such period as you may see fit to r...

Herman Melville

and yet a child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes.

Herman Melville

So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. they err who would assert that invariable this is owing to the i...

Herman Melville

At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,' was his mildly cadaverous reply.

Herman Melville

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

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

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Herman Melville

Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?

Herman Melville

...to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

Herman Melville

I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.

Herman Melville

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the ...

Herman Melville

They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business.

Herman Melville

To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.

Herman Melville

[T]here is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.

Herman Melville

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and j...

Herman Melville

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in poli...

Herman Melville

Author Bio

  • NameHerman Melville
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet
  • AliasesHermann Melville; Herman Melvill; HermanMelville
  • BornAugust 1, 1819
  • DiedSeptember 28, 1891
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionTeacher; Sailor; Lecturer; Poet; Writer; Novelist; Essayist