Herman Melville
Moby-Dick, greatest American novel
Most quoted
"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; by all the world, as if some invisible tyrant were trying to drive me to a certain spot, and I, for all my resistance, could not choose but go?"
— from Moby Dick, 1851
"To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But to have been young Belshazzar, and not to have been haughty, but to have been a mere good-natured, joking boy, therein must have been a still more fine and subtile touch of earthly divineness."
— from Pierre, 1852
"Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?"
— from Moby Dick, 1851
All quotes by Herman Melville (234)
No great writer has ever been a good husband.
The world is a great stage, but the play is a tragedy.
In art, as in life, the greatest enemy is mediocrity.
The sea was my first love.
All my books are botches.
I have a sort of sea-feeling while I write.
The truth is more important than the facts.
Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.
To do nothing and get something, formed a boy's ideal of a manly career.
The march of intellect is slow.
Nature is not to be trifled with.
The soul is an immortal force.
In the heart of man lies the mystery of the universe.
Friendship is the greatest bond.
The artist's life is one of solitude.
Whales are the elephants of the sea.
Democracy is the whale-ship of the world.
I prefer the saddle to the streetcar.
The pen is mightier than the harpoon.
Life is a sea of troubles.
Contemporaries of Herman Melville
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Herman Melville (1819–1891).