Herman Melville: Man

Herman Melville was American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Herman Melville: 288 quotes19 likes

“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)

“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 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)