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Herman Melville Quotes
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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

“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.”

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 30, Billy in the Darbies

Dreams , Feeling

“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)

Family , Nature

“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)

Way

“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

War , Time

“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

Books , Chance

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

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

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

Life

“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

Life , Way

“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)

Personality

“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)

Mood , Nature , Reading

“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

Hell

“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

Way

“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)

Truth , World , Art , Flying

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

Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

Truth , Sea

“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

Fight , Personality

“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

Time

“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

Men , Heart

“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)

World

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

Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

“Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.”

Herman Melville

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 1851); published in Memories of Hawthorne (1897) by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 158

Truth , Heart

“It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers, — it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all, that there is no hope for us in these smooth pleasing writers that know their powers.”

Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

Hope , Failure , Success

“And do not think, my boy, that because I, impulsively broke forth in jubillations over Shakspeare, that, therefore, I am of the number of the snobs who burn their tuns of rancid fat at his shrine. No, I would stand afar off & alone, & burn some pure Palm oil, the product of some overtopping trunk.”

Herman Melville

I would to God Shakspeare had lived later, & promenaded in Broadway. Not that I might have had the pleasure of leaving my card for him at the Astor, or made merry with him over a bowl of the fine Duyckinck punch; but that the muzzle which all men wore on their soul in the Elizebethan day, might not have intercepted Shakspers full articulations. For I hold it a verity, that even Shakspeare, was not a frank man to the uttermost. And, indeed, who in this intolerant universe is, or can be? But the Declaration of Independence makes a difference.—There, I have driven my horse so hard that I have made my inn before sundown.
Letter to Evert Augustus Duyckinck (3 March 1849); published in The Letters of Herman Melville (1960) edited by Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman, p. 79

Thinking , Boy

“The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?”

Herman Melville

Because one did survive the wreck.
Epilogue
Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851)