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)
For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness.
Truth is in the heart, not in the head.
The sea is the only place where a man is truly free.
A man thinks he is free, but he is only a slave to his own desires.
I try all things; I achieve what I can.
The world is a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage in.
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 an old friend.
The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
We are all of us, in this world, more or less, like passengers in a ship.
There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the folly of man.
I am a man of peace, but I am also a man of war.
The world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
I have a soul, and I have a body; and I use them both.
The sea is a mighty power, and it will have its way.
It is better to be a fool than to be wise and not know it.
The sea is a mirror, and it reflects all that is in the heart of man.
I am a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
The sea is a mystery, and it will never be fully known.
There is no happiness in this world, but only a cessation of pain.
The sea is a tomb, and it holds the secrets of the dead.
Contemporaries of Herman Melville
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Herman Melville (1819–1891).