Quotes from Herman Melville

Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.

Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.

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

Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!

I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling.

Honor lies in the mane of a horse.

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.

In some things, we Americans leave to other countries the carrying out of the principle that stands at the head of our Declaration of Independence.

Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.

This divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror.

Prayer draws us near to our own souls.

If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.

For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who "believe and tremble" has one.

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

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.

Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.

At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.

Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.

You know nothing till you know all; which is the reason we never know any thing.

And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.

He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity.

From without no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves unless some interior responding wonder meets it.

While nature thus very early and very abundantly feeds us, she is very late in tutoring us as to the proper methodization of our diet.