Herman Melville Quotes

1819–1891

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, essayist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period.

Also known as: Melville, Melville, Herman, White-Jacket

Random Herman Melville quote

89 quotes

Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity — reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel — Art.

Timoleon (1891)

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

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)

In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.

But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.

Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852)

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

White-Jacket (1850)

Insensible as he is to a thousand wants, and removed from harassing cares, may not the savage be the happier man of the two?

Typee (1846)

Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.

White-Jacket (1850)

In time of peril, like the needle to the loadstone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command.

White-Jacket (1850)

Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.

Moby-Dick (1851)

Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?

White-Jacket (1850)

Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

The French have ever plumed themselves upon being the most humane and polished of nations.

Typee (1846)

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

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857)

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852)

At the height of their madness
The night winds pause,
Recollecting themselves;
But no lull in these wars.

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)

Who’s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?

Moby-Dick (1851)

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.

The Encantadas (1854)

Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.

Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852)

Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!

Billy Budd, Sailor (1891)

Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.

White-Jacket (1850)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Herman Melville (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.