Herman Melville Quotes

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Herman Melville

Profession : Novelist

Birth : August 1, 1819

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

Herman Melville

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.

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

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Herman Melville

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.

Herman Melville

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.

Herman Melville

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.

Herman Melville

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

Herman Melville

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

Herman Melville

There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.

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

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

Herman Melville

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.

Herman Melville

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

Herman Melville

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.

Herman Melville

Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.

Herman Melville

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

Herman Melville

Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

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

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

Herman Melville