A Quote by Herman Melville

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.

Herman Melville

Quote Topics

Become Cunning Feline Form Human Madness May Most Oftentimes Some Still Thing Think

Quote Author

Herman Melville
American - Novelist
August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing

Herman Melville

Those who have the most cunning affect all their lives to condemn cunning; that they may make use of it on some great occasion, and to some great end.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form

John Adams

In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too

Saul Bellow

I think most people who decide to become a musician have to be prepared for some degree of struggle. It makes the art better if you go through some struggles. To be an artist, in any form, you have to develop some sense of compassion and empathy - it's an important quality for everyone to have, on a human level. But I think, as part of our job, you have to be able to do that, so suffering, tends - if you allow it - to let you look on the bright side. It will help with those senses.

Reeve Carney

You can still achieve certain things through effort, struggle, determination, and sheer hard work or cunning. But there is no joy in such endeavor, and it invariably ends in some form of suffering.

Eckhart Tolle

The Devil can so completely assume the human form, when he wants to deceive us, that we may well lie with what seems to be a woman, of real flesh and blood, and yet all the while 'tis only the Devil in the shape of a woman. 'Tis the same with women, who may think that a man is in bed with them, yet 'tis only the Devil; and...the result of this connection is oftentimes an imp of darkness, half mortal, half devil.

Martin Luther

History may be servitude. History may be freedom. See, now they vanish. The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them, to become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

T. S. Eliot

Sacrifice doesn't really exist on a national level anymore and that's a pretty new thing - most people aren't engaged nationally in some form of service and that changes the way you think about people in your country; you kind of think of them at a distance. And so there's that shift away from some sort of sacrifice - thinking of yourself as the most important thing in the world versus thinking of yourself as some sort of a whole.

Joe Meno

I believe in the human form; let me find something, some method, by which that form may achieve the utmost beauty.

Richard Jefferies

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical may be madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness ...Maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.

Miguel de Cervantes

Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction - it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass.

Brian Aldiss

The philosophies that have been inspired by scientific technique are power philosophies, and tend to regard everything non-human as mere raw material. Ends are no longer considered; only the skillfulness of the process is valued. This also is a form of madness. It is, in our day, the most dangerous form, and the one against which a sane philosophy should provide an antidote

Bertrand Russell

Madness will push you anywhere it wants. It never tells you where you're going, or why. It tells you it doesn't matter. It persuades you. It dangles something sparkly before you, shimmering like that water patch on the road up ahead. You will drive until you find it, the treasure, the thing you most desire. You will never find it. Madness may mock you so long you will die of the search. Or it will tire of you, turn its back, oblivious as you go flying. The car is beside you, smoking, belly-up, still spinning its wheels.

Marya Hornbacher

When we think of God, we are apt to think of Him in human form. In the Epiphanies of the Old Testament God revealed Himself to Joshua and others in human form. He puts Himself within the compass of our highest conception, in order that He may make Himself real to us in His love and sympathy and power.