Herman Melville Quotes

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

Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without the least quivering of his own.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, a...

Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day - very much such a swee...

With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehendi...

He offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.

That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true — not true, ...

one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas du...

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

There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve ...

I would prefer not to.

So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlis...

Nippers was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man of about fi...

To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.

For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettin...

how I wish I could fist a bit of old-fashioned beef in the fore-castle, as I used to when i was befo...

Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.

…for it is often to be observed of the shallower men, that they are the very last to despond. It is ...

...flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.

Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.

The fiendlike skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindicti...

You will generally observe that, of all Americans, your foreign-born citizens are the most patriotic...

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for...

At last I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Othe...

Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that m...

Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face-at least to my taste-his countenance yet h...

Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea...

All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of...

... the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encou...

But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and ...

I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must not for that very ...

But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the d...

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

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, a...

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and f...

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for...

Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold peril...

All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.

The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which ...

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but...

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare...

Thy silence, then that voices thee.

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

Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but...

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this s...

At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his b...

...then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and p...

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purs...

The frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Wha...

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only w...

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

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned ent...

Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined...

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my s...

They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the...

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; ...

In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested appl...

[T]hen all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago...

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing...

Ignorance is the parent of fear ...

Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a bil...

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only w...

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

Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted dow...

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those...

War yet shall be, but warriors are now operatives; war's made less grand than peace.

But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever regarded with emoti...

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

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

Ahab and aguish lay stretched together in one hammock.

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

Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in th...

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the univers...

The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of P...

But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.

The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this e...

Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness

So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but...

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinar...

Come what will, one comfort's always left — that unfailing comfort is, it's all predestinated.

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

There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, an...

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, ho...

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master...

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

Aye, aye, it must be so. I've oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye, he's chasing ME now; not I, H...

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my s...

When I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, al...

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to spea...

The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. The...

...the great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open...

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the S...

Of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are the most apt to get out of order.

Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences...

For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettin...

Who ain't a slave? Tell me that... I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that eve...

And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, w...

whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent...