Quotes By 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
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
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
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
Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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.
Herman Melville
There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
Herman Melville
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
Herman Melville
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
Herman Melville
The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.
Herman Melville
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
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
There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
Herman Melville