Herman Melville

There are some enterprises in which a complete obnubilation of the brain seems indispensable.

I try all things, I achieve what I can.

I stand for the heart, though I stand alone.

To be true to the great power of blackness in him.

But the soul is a sort of intensely black pearl, which, though glimmering sometimes with an awful resplendence, is yet oftenest incrusted with an unbearable scurf.

Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote.

All my books are botches.

For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the folly of man.

Silence is the only virtue.

A polar wind blows through a hell of ice and snow.

The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

Who aint a slave? Tell me that.

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

As for me, I am a savage, owing no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any time to rebel against him.

The world is a joke; and, be it said, a very poor one.

A man who has but one eye, however good that eye may be, should never be trusted.

I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs.

Truly, to enjoy thoroughly the true poetry of the sea, your poem must preserve all its wildest prose.