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

Whatever fortune brings, don't be afraid of doing things.

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

There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.

Herman Melville

There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

Herman Melville

There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.

Herman Melville

There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.

Herman Melville

Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

Herman Melville

There are hardly five critics in America; and several of them are asleep.

Herman Melville

There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.

Herman Melville

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

Herman Melville

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

Herman Melville

To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.

Herman Melville

Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?

Herman Melville

There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.

Herman Melville

Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.

Herman Melville

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.

Herman Melville

I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

Herman Melville

Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

Herman Melville

one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duelist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six-inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab.

Herman Melville

I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.

Herman Melville

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

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