Quotes By 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.

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

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.

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

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

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

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

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.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

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

Truth is in things, and not in words.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.