Herman Melville's Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

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

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.

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

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.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

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

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.

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 smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

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

Truth is in things, and not in words.

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.

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

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.

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

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