Melville Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational Melville quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand; and never slept so sound before —
Herman Melville

In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece. —
Herman Melville

Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. —
Herman Melville

Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor —
Herman Melville

Morning to ye! Morning to ye! —
Herman Melville

For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal ... —
Herman Melville

Delight,
top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. —
Herman Melville

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. —
Herman Melville

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

Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. —
Herman Melville

Ignorance is the father of all fear. —
Herman Melville

For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who "believe and tremble" has one. —
Herman Melville

Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth. —
Herman Melville

Leviathan is not the biggest fish; - I have heard of Krakens. —
Herman Melville

Bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the fire-side. —
Herman Melville

Ego non baptiso te in nomine ... but make out the rest yourself. —
Herman Melville

Until we understand that our grief outweighs a thousand joys, we will never understand what Christianity is all about. —
Herman Melville

Stay true to the dreams of thy youth. —
Herman Melville

Yet, after all, insensible as he is to a thousand wants, and removed from harassing cares, my not the savage be the happier man..? —
Herman Melville

Queequeq, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen? —
Herman Melville

It is not down on any map; true places never are. —
Herman Melville

There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas. —
Herman Melville

Holloa! Starbuck's astir," said the rigger. "He's a lively chief mate that; good man, and a pious; but —
Herman Melville

There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled. —
Herman Melville

Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass. —
Herman Melville

The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne. —
Herman Melville

The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. —
Herman Melville

Being in love with someone is like daytime. You know there are other stars our there someplace, but you can only see the sun. —
Henry Melville

immortality is but ubiquity in time); that —
Herman Melville

The terrors of truth and dart of death To faith alike are vain. —
Herman Melville

You cannot hide the soul. —
Herman Melville

Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed. —
Herman Melville

To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes. —
Herman Melville

It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind. —
Herman Melville

Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a coward. —
Herman Melville

When the passage "All men are born free and equal," when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves? —
Herman Melville

Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins? —
Herman Melville
Melville's Moby-Dick - —
John Irving

The characters tell their story - I am merely the tool used to record it —
Marti Melville

The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love. —
Herman Melville

True places are not found on maps. —
Herman Melville

Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time? —
Herman Melville

An uncommon prudence is habtual with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide. —
Herman Melville

Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes after. —
Herman Melville

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. —
Herman Melville

Slowly it floats more and more away, —
Herman Melville

See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them. —
Herman Melville

Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises ... the best excellence in the children of any other land. —
Herman Melville

Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. —
Herman Melville

Never joke at funerals, or during business transactions. —
Herman Melville

A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk. —
Herman Melville

In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. —
Herman Melville

But thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous. —
Herman Melville

There's magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea. —
Herman Melville

Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the victory to thee! —
Herman Melville

an eight day clock. —
Herman Melville

Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. —
Herman Melville

The shadows of things are greater than themselves; and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance. —
Herman Melville

The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say. —
Herman Melville

It is better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one. —
Herman Melville

I would prefer not to. —
Herman Melville

The only real owner of anything is its commander; —
Herman Melville

Flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home. —
Herman Melville

go on a whaling voyage; this —
Herman Melville

God is liberal of color; so should man be. —
Herman Melville

Aye, aye, it must be so. I've oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye, he's chasing ME now; not I, HIM
that's bad —
Herman Melville

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

What he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. —
Herman Melville

Though tyrants threat, though Lyons rage and rore
Defy them all, and feare not to win out. —
Elizabeth Melville

In the choice of a horse and a wife a man must please himself ignoring the opinion and advice of friends. —
George Whyte-Melville

To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. —
Herman Melville

In certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance. —
Herman Melville

in coat, heart, body, and brain; —
Herman Melville

There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick! —
Herman Melville

Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien. —
Herman Melville

War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim. —
Herman Melville