Herman Melville Quotes

• The mighty US suddenly seemed as impotent as a beached whale.

  Herman Melville

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• Ignorance is the parent of fear.

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

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• Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.

  Herman Melville

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• If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.

  Herman Melville

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• Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

  Herman Melville

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• Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory—the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended.

  Herman Melville

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• He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no, why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unencumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet bag.

  Herman Melville

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• Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!

  Herman Melville

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• Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.

  Herman Melville

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• Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve through!

  Herman Melville

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• Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure.

  Herman Melville

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• Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

  Herman Melville

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• For whatever is truly wonderous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.

  Herman Melville

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• There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

  Herman Melville

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• It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.

  Herman Melville

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• It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me…for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of a panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.

  Herman Melville

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• Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

  Herman Melville

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• All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!

  Herman Melville

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• Call me Ishmael.

  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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