Herman Melville quotes - page 10

Call me Ishmael. (Herman Melville)
. . . however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it. View quote
Herman Melville
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. View quote
Herman Melville
Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could forever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strangethan any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. View quote
Herman Melville
Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his he owns it . . . View quote
Herman Melville
In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods. View quote
Herman Melville
We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world deaf to its voice and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us. View quote
Herman Melville
The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns. View quote
Herman Melville
The lightning flashes through my skull mine eyeballs ache and ache my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. View quote
Herman Melville
He says NO in thunder but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. View quote
Herman Melville
God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates. (Herman Melville)
Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory -- the world Then we pygmies must be content to have out paper allegories but ill comprehended. View quote
Herman Melville
Whence came you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips - lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling. Now, sympathising with the paper, my angel turns over another leaf. You did not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled the book - and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough to praise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul. View quote
Herman Melville
Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. True Work is the necessity of poor humanity's earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure. Besides, 99 hundreths of all the work done in the world is either foolish and unnecessary, or harmful and wicked. View quote
Herman Melville
I let nothing slip, however small; and feel myself actuated by the same motive which has prompted many worthy old chroniclers, to set down the merest trifles concerning things that are destined to pass away entirely from the earth, and which, if not preserved in the nick of time, must infallibly perish from the memories of man. Who knows that this humble narrative may not hereafter prove the history of an obsolete barbarism? Who knows that, when men-of-war shall be no more, "White-Jacket" may not be quoted to show to the people in the Millennium what a man-of-war was? God hasten the time! View quote
Herman Melville
From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space. Wonder interlocks with wonder; and then the confounding feeling comes. No cause have we to fancy, that a horse, a dog, a fowl, ever stand transfixed beneath yon skyey load of majesty. But our soul's arches underfit into its; and so, prevent the upper arch from falling on us with unsustainable inscrutableness. View quote
Herman Melville
For the future of the freed slaves we may well be concerned; but the future of the whole country, involving the future of the blacks, urges a paramount claim upon our anxiety. Effective benignity, like the Nile, is not narrow in its bounty, and true policy is always broad. View quote
Herman Melville