Herman Melville: Trending quotes

“The truth seems to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world, — at least, with respect to himself. Personally, I doubt not, that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to judge — that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public”

On the Slain Collegians, st. 2
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

“Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.”

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”

Bk. III, ch. 1
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“If possible, not to let the men so much as surmise that their officers anticipate aught amiss from them is the tacit rule in a military ship. And the more that some sort of trouble should really be apprehended the more do the officers keep that apprehension to themselves; tho' not the less unostentatious vigilance may be augmented.
In the present instance the sentry placed over the prisoner had strict orders to let no one have communication with him but the Chaplain. And certain unobtrusive measures were taken absolutely to insure this point.”

Source: Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851), Ch. 29 : Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb

“I cannot analyse my heart, though it then stood still within me. But the thing that swayed me to my purpose was not altogether the thought that Captain Claret was about to degrade me, and that I had taken an oath with my soul that he should not. No, I felt my man's manhood so bottomless within me, that no word, no blow, no scourge of Captain Claret could cut me deep enough for that. I but swung to an instinct in me — the instinct diffused through all animated nature, the same that prompts even a worm to turn under the heel. Locking souls-with him, I meant to drag Captain Claret from this earthly tribunal of his to that of Jehovah and let Him decide between us. No other way could I escape the scourge.”

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 23

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 67

“His was the scorn which thinks it not worth the while to be scornful. Those he most scorned, never knew it.”

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

Bk. XXV, ch. 3
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable," was his mildly cadaverous reply.”

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 19

Herman Melville book Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)

“Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity — reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel — Art.”

“Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.”

Timoleon http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=libraryscience, Art (1891)

“At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these — "God bless Captain Vere!"”

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

“What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event — the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.”

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 25

“At the height of their madness
The night winds pause,
Recollecting themselves;
But no lull in these wars.”

Bk. IV
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

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

The Armies of the Wilderness, Pt. II, st. 5
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 36

“And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous- a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!”

Herman Melville book Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)

“The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?)”

“The more and the more that he wrote, and the deeper and the deeper that he dived, Pierre saw the everlasting elusiveness of Truth; the universal lurking insincerity of even the greatest and purest written thoughts. Like knavish cards, the leaves of all great books were covertly packed. He was but packing one set the more; and that a very poor jaded set and pack indeed. So that there was nothing he more spurned, than his own aspirations; nothing he more abhorred than the loftiest part of himself. The brightest success, now seemed intolerable to him, since he so plainly saw, that the brightest success could not be the sole offspring of Merit; but of Merit for the one thousandth part, and nine hundred and ninety-nine combining and dovetailing accidents for the rest.”

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (June 1, 1851).

“There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan. Yet the work of Reconstruction, if admitted to be feasible at all, demands little but common sense and Christian charity. Little but these? These are much.”

Bk. XXV, ch. 3
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“But me they'll lash me 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 this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.”

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