Herman Melville Quotes

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

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

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

  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

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

  Herman Melville

• 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.

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

• Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

• Art is the objectification of feeling.

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

• A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

• We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results

  Herman Melville

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Herman Melville (76)

Birth:	1st August, 1819
Death:	28th September, 1891
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist, Poet, Sailor, Writer

About

Herman Melville was born in New York City, New York, USA. He was an American novelist, short story writer and poet. His best known works include Typee, a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick. He wrote several books include: Omoo, Mardi(novel), Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre(novel), Israel Potter, Bartleby and Benito Cereno(short story), The Confidence Man, Benito Cereno(novel), Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems, The Piazza Tales(short story), Clarel(poem), I and My Chimney, Timoleon(poem), and The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids(short story).

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Births

• 1946 - Polly Toynbee
• 1930 - Meg Greenfield
• 1943 - Martha Shelley
• 1931 - Scotty Moore
• 1976 - Aaron Stanford

Deaths

• 1985 - Potter Stewart
• 2003 - Alan Bates
• 1994 - Marjorie Joyner
• 1938 - Zona Gale