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)
I am a man of faith, and I believe in the unseen.
The sea is a song, and it sings of life and death.
The world is a dream, and we are all dreaming.
The sea is a mother, and it nurtures all that lives.
I am a man of hope, and I look to the future.
The sea is a father, and it guides all that sails.
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
I am a man of love, and I embrace all that is good.
The sea is a lover, and it embraces all that it touches.
The world is a mystery, and we are all trying to solve it.
I am a man of truth, and I seek to know the truth.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he cannot for the life of him comprehend.
All men live enveloped in a common mist; in all cases are so much many children in the wood.
To be true to the game, you must be false to the man.
A man thinks he is dying for love, but he is really dying for a woman who does not love him.
The sea is the only truth.
There is no folly like being in love, save being in love with a fool.
Humanity, in the aggregate, is a fool.
A man's a man, but a whale's a whale.
We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.
Contemporaries of Herman Melville
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Herman Melville (1819–1891).