1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes
page 2

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee , a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick . His work was almost forgotten during his last 30 years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style; the vocabulary is rich and original, a strong sense of rhythm infuses the elaborate sentences, the imagery is often mystical or ironic, and the abundance of allusion extends to biblical scripture, myth, philosophy, literature, and the visual arts.

Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a merchant in French dry goods. His formal education ended abruptly after his father died in 1832, leaving the family in financial straits. He briefly became a schoolteacher before he took to sea in 1839 as a sailor on a merchant ship. In 1840, he signed aboard the whaler Acushnet for his first whaling voyage but jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. He returned to Boston in 1844 after further adventures.

His first book was Typee , a highly romanticized account of his life among Polynesians. It became such a best-seller that he wrote the sequel Omoo . These successes encouraged him to marry Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of a prominent Boston family, but the success proved hard to sustain. His first novel that was not based on his own experiences was Mardi , a sea narrative that develops into a philosophical allegory—but it was not well received. He received warmer reviews for Redburn , a story of life on a merchant ship, and his 1850 description of the harsh life aboard a man-of-war in White-Jacket, but they did not provide financial security.

In August 1850, Melville moved his growing family to Arrowhead, a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts where he established a profound but short-lived friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated Moby-Dick. This novel was another commercial failure, published to mixed reviews. Melville's career as a popular author effectively ended with the cool reception of Pierre , in part a satirical portrait of the literary culture at the time. His Revolutionary War novel Israel Potter appeared in 1855. From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, most notably "Bartleby, the Scrivener" , "The Encantadas" , and "Benito Cereno" . These and three other stories were collected in 1856 as The Piazza Tales. In 1857, he traveled to England where he reunited with Hawthorne for the first time since 1852, and then went on to tour the Near East. The Confidence-Man was the last prose work that he published. He moved to New York to take a position as Customs Inspector and turned to poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War.

In 1867, his oldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876, a metaphysical epic. In 1886, his son Stanwix died and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, left one volume unpublished, and returned to prose of the sea. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death but was published in 1924.

Melville's death from cardiovascular disease in 1891 subdued a reviving interest in his work. The 1919 centennial of his birth became the starting point of the "Melville Revival." Critics discovered his work, scholars explored his life, his major novels and stories have come to be considered world classics, and his poetry has gradually gained respect.

✵ 1. August 1818 – 28. September 1891
Herman Melville photo
Herman Melville: 144   quotes 18   likes

Herman Melville Quotes

“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.”

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
Source: Billy Budd, Sailor
Context: Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho' for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.

Color , Drawing

“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

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Thinking , Madness

“Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.”

Herman Melville

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Thinking , Sleep

“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
Beauty

“A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.”

Herman Melville book Moby-Dick

Source: 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 book Moby-Dick

Source: Moby Dick

Secret , Soul , Learning

“A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.”

Herman Melville

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 1851); published in Memories of Hawthorne (1897) by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 157
Context: In me divine magnanimities are spontaneous and instantaneous — catch them while you can. The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the Gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling — no hopelessness is in it, no despair. Content — that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.

Books , Feeling , Sense

“Whatever my fate, I'll go to it laughing.”

Herman Melville
Fate

“Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”

Herman Melville

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Wisdom , Time , Madness

“Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Variant: Whoever afflict us, whatever surround, Life is a voyage that's homeward-bound!
Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 93
Context: The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would. From the last ills no being can save another; therein each man must be his own saviour. For the rest, whatever befall us, let us never train our murderous guns inboard; let us not mutiny with bloody pikes in our hands. Our Lord High Admiral will yet interpose; and though long ages should elapse, and leave our wrongs unredressed, yet, shipmates and world-mates! let us never forget, that, Whoever afflict us, whatever surround, Life is a voyage that's homeward-bound!

Life

“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

Idea , Hell

“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

Madness

“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

Books

“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

Sleep

“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

Hate , Hell , Heart

“Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”

Herman Melville book Moby-Dick

Source: Moby-Dick

Faith , Memory

“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

Lie , Books

“We cannibals must help these Christians.”

Herman Melville

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Help

“The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket

Past , Future

“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

God

“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

Life , God , Lie , Way

“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)

War , Youth , Time , Heart

“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)

World , Mood , Thinking , Sense

“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)

“What troops
Of 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.”

Herman Melville

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

Life , Lie , Boy , Happiness

“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.”

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

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

Time

“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

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

Life , Death , Age

“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.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

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

Way , Soul , Nature , Heart

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

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

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

Thinking

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

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

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

God , Angels , Dead

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

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.”

Herman Melville

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

Love , Hate , Art , Angels

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

Herman Melville

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

Religion

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

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

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

God

“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.”

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

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

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

Herman Melville

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

War , Madness , Night

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

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

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

People , World , Time

“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)

Home , Solitude

“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.”

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

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

Truth , Books , Universe , Success

“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.”

Herman Melville

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

Truth , Sense