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Herman Melville quotes
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“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at...”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“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.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon...”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself!”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“I try all things; I achieve what I can.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; 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.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he's bound to hell.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Ignorance is the parent of fear”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Cæsar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“a man can be honest in any sort of skin.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
“If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives' darkling hint.”
Herman Melville
,
Moby-Dick
view all 54 quotes
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Moby-Dick
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