Quotes from Herman Melville

An uncommon prudence is habitual with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide.

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

All civil charmsAnd priestly spells which late held hearts in awe—Fear-bound, subjected to a better swayThan sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.

In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.

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.

If Luther's day expand to Darwin's year,Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?

The grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.

A smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities.

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a hiss.

Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?

Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?

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

But me they'll lash in hammock, drop me deep.Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?Just ease these darbies [manacles] at the wrist,And roll me over fair!I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.

There floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

Dies, all dies!The grass it dies, but in vernal rainUp it springs and it lives again;Over and over, again and againIt lives, it dies and it lives again.

What troopsOf generous boys in happiness thus bred—Saturnians through life's Tempe led,Went from the North and came from the South,With golden mottoes in the mouth,To lie down midway on a bloody bed.

One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocent self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.

When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the "big canoe" of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the viper whose sting is destined to poison all their joys.

Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appall!

All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.