Quotes of Herman Melville - somelinesforyou

“ Life's a voyage that's homeward bound. ”

- Herman Melville

“ A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. ”

- Herman Melville

“ A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. ”

- Herman Melville

“ It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ”

- Herman Melville

“ It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ”

- Herman Melville

“ To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living. ”

- Herman Melville

“ It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ”

- Herman Melville

“ Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth. ”

- Herman Melville

“ It is not down in any map; true places never are. ”

- Herman Melville

“ It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ”

- Herman Melville

“ To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. ”

- Herman Melville

“ A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities. ”

- Herman Melville

“ Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth. ”

- Herman Melville

“ Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras. ”

- Herman Melville

“ So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunderheads overboard, and then you will float light and right. ”

- Herman Melville

“ Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it ”

- Herman Melville

“ The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the misermerman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, everjuvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, Godomnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. ”

- Herman Melville

“ Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. ”

- Herman Melville

“ But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. ”

- Herman Melville

“ Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. ”

- Herman Melville

“ Strangest problems of life seem clearing; but clouds sweep betweenIs my journey’s end coming? ”

- Herman Melville

“ Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none. ”

- Herman Melville

“ More terrible, to see how feline Fate will sometimes dally with a human soul, and by a nameless magic make it repulse a sane despair with a hope which is but mad. Unwittingly I imp this catlike thing, sporting with the heart of him who reads; for if he feel not he reads in vain. ”

- Herman Melville

“ The higher the intelligence, the more faith, and the less credulity; Gabriel rejects more than we, but outbelieves us all. ”

- Herman Melville

“ To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. ”

- Herman Melville

“ Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian. ”

- Herman Melville

“ It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ”

- Herman Melville

“ [T]hen all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. ”

- Herman Melville

“ Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to “enlarge” your mind? Subtilize it. ”

- Herman Melville

“ The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. ”

- Herman Melville
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