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)
Books are the best companions.
The unknown is the greatest adventure.
Man's soul is a battleground.
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing.
The sea teaches humility.
Fame is a vapor.
Writing is a lonely profession.
The heart of darkness is within us.
Peace comes from within.
The artist's duty is to truth.
In the end, we are all Ishmaels.
Love is the anchor of the soul.
All men live enveloped in a common mist; in all cases are so much in a haze that they cannot clearly discern not only other objects but one another.
Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine.
To be true to the game, you must be true to the chase.
The sea is a wilderness of waves, a desert of waters.
No man can ever feel his own identity aright except as he feels at least the residuum of the everlasting things in him.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes to nothing so kindly as to his own thoughts.
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.
The world is a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete.
Contemporaries of Herman Melville
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Herman Melville (1819–1891).