Quotes from Herman Melville

We die, because we live.

In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.

We die of too much life.

O Death, the Consecrator! Nothing so sanctifies a name As to be written--Dead. Nothing so wins a life from blame, So covers it from wrath and shame, As doth the burial-bed.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.

To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.

Youth is the time when hearts are large, And stirring wars Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn To the blade it draws.

Let us only hate hatred; and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.

Time is made up of various ages; and each thinks its own a novelty.

Youth is the time when hearts are large.

Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.

To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.

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

As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

Traveling takes the ink out of one's pen as well as the cash out of one's purse.

Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.

The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.

People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.

See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.

contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love.