Herman Melville Quotes

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

  Herman Melville

• There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

  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

• There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.

  Herman Melville

• There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.

  Herman Melville

• There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.

  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

• There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

  Herman Melville

• 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

• The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.

  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

• Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

  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

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

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

• It is not down in any map; true places never are.

  Herman Melville

  Topics in Truth

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

  Herman Melville

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

  Herman Melville

  Topics in Success

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

  Herman Melville

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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Today's Anniversary - 26th December

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