Quotes By 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.

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Truth is in things, and not in words.

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

Whatever fortune brings, don't be afraid of doing things.

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

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

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

There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.

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

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

There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.

To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.

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

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

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

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

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

There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

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

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

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

To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

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

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.

To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.

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