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Herman Melville: 288 quotes19 likes

“In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.”

Herman Melville

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!”

Herman Melville

Source: Bartleby the Scrivener

“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.”

Herman Melville

Variant: for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

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

Herman Melville

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.”

Herman Melville

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”

Herman Melville

Variant: Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.
Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“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 book Moby-Dick

Source: Moby Dick

“Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.”

Herman Melville

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“We cannibals must help these Christians.”

Herman Melville

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.”

Herman Melville

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.”

Herman Melville book The Encantadas

Sketch Eighth
The Encantadas (1854)

“Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, as well as philanthropists toward the blacks our fellow-men. In all things, and toward all, we are enjoined to do as we would be done by.”

Herman Melville

Supplement
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

“Oh, give me again the rover's life — the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it, sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 19

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

Herman Melville

On the Slain Collegians, st. 1
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

“Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilisation and christianize Christendom?”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

This has often been quoted with modernized American spelling, rendering it "to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?"
Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 64

“Certain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. For, in certain moods, no man can weigh this world, without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.”

Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

“The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.”

Herman Melville

Epilogue
Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851)