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
Context: 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. — 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.
“No one's serious at seventeen,
When lindens line the promenades”
“The light teaches you to convert life into a festive promenade.”
“Head,” p. 107
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Is It Possible to Write a Poem”
“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”
Source: Life on the Mississippi
“If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.”
As quoted in The Essential Samuel Beckett: An Illustrated Biography, by Enoch Brater (revised edition, 2003) ISBN 0-500-28411-3, p. 75
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 1
Context: The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying.
“God knows how ardently I wish I had ten lives”
In a letter to Charles Babbage, as quoted in The Shadow of the Telescope: A Biography of John Herschel by Günther Buttmann, p. 14
Interview with Maxim magazine, explaining why he became vegan; as quoted in "Woody Harrelson’s Vegan Acne Cure", in HuffingtonPost.com (23 September 2009) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/woody-harrelsons-vegan-ac_n_295765.html.
Thomas Wilson, Discourse on Usury (1571), p. 182.
About
Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 20
“To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live.”
Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain
