Herman Melville Quotations

*A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

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

*Life's a voyage that's homeward bound.

*Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

*When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"

*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, Moby Dick, 1851

Opening lines of Moby Dick:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. 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. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.


*A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
Herman Melville

*A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

*A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

*Art is the objectification of feeling.

*At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.

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

*Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.

*He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

*He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.

*Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

*Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

*I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.

*In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

*Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?

*It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

*It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.