Top 529 Quotes & Sayings by Herman Melville - Page 2

Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.

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.

Whatever my fate, I'll go to it laughing.

Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run

In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.

You cannot hide the soul.

A thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true.

We cannot live for ourselves alone.

When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.

The most mighty of nature's laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.

One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocence self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.

What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.

Nature is nobody's ally.

All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence... Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature. It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God.

That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.

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.

Silence is the only Voice of our God.

True places are not found on maps.

We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.

It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.

Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.

Meditation and water are wedded for ever.

The eyes are the gateway to the soul.

Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.

See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.

One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.

The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.

I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, no matter how comical.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.

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.

Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.

There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.

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?

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

Better 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.

A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.

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

Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.

I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.

Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor

I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.

Failure is the true test of greatness

You know nothing till you know all; which is the reason we never know any thing.

Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.

I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.

Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.

Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.

In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.

The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.

The poor man wants many things; the covetous man, all.

There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.

Aid my disillusionment, my friend!

An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.