Quotes from Herman Melville

Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds.

Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude—how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whaleships' standing orders, Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time.

We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard sent on through the wilderness of untried things...

There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

Who ain't a slave? Tell me that.

Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life.

I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow

Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels.

Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.

am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in. By

Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.

In fact, tell him I've diddled him, and perhaps somebody else.

Of erections how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!

I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.

For some of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.

And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there i still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.

There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.

Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer

Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness.

Best, therefore, withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.

Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play.

With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

And had you watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked.