Herman Melville: Trending quotes

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Herman Melville: 288 quotes19 likes

“Well, there is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.”

Herman Melville

Source: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857), Ch. 5

“In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.”

Herman Melville book Benito Cereno

Benito Cereno, Putnam's Monthly ( October 1855 http://books.google.com/books?id=TlYAAAAAYAAJ&q=%22In+armies+navies+cities+or+families+in+nature+herself+nothing+more+relaxes+good+order+than+misery%22&pg=PA356#v=onepage)

“But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.”

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. V, ch. 7
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“In war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal punishment decreed by a drum-head court — on the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the General — follows without delay on the heel of conviction without appeal.”

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21

“Though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 41

“Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 7

“It is — or seems to be — a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally & impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it.”

Herman Melville

Letter to Samuel Savage (24 August 1851), as published in The Writings of Herman Melville : The Northwestern-Newberry Edition (1993), edited by Lynn Horth, Vol. 14, p. 203

“I found that but to glean after this man, is better than to be in at the harvest of others.”

Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

“Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.”

Herman Melville book Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)

“Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.”

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. XXV, ch. 4
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“Indolence is heaven’s ally here,
And energy the child of hell:
The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear
But brims the poisoned well.”

Herman Melville

Timoleon, Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the Twelfth Century, Fragment 2

“It was not a very white jacket, but white enough, in all conscience, as the sequel will show.
The way I came by it was this…”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 1, First lines

“In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, — even though it be covertly, and by snatches.”

Herman Melville

Since at least 1954 this has also been published at times as "Truth is forced to fly like a sacred white doe…", apparently a typographical error.
Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

“You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.”

Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

“Says a writer whom few know, "Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it. Much so with respect to other emergencies involving considerations both practical and moral, and when it is imperative promptly to act."”

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

This statement is usually attributed entirely to Melville, but the way he presents it in the story indicates that he might be quoting a lesser known author.
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21

“In time of peril, like the needle to the loadstone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 27

“Billy's agony, mainly proceeding from a generous young heart's virgin experience of the diabolical incarnate and effective in some men — the tension of that agony was over now.”

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 24

“Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.”

Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

“It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.”

Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)