“A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.”
Bk. IV, ch. 5
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Source: Pierre: or, the Ambiguities
Quotes from book
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities
Pierre; or, The Ambiguities is the seventh book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in New York in 1852. The novel, which uses many conventions of Gothic fiction, develops the psychological, sexual, and family tensions between Pierre Glendinning; his widowed mother; Glendinning Stanley, his cousin; Lucy Tartan, his fiancée; and Isabel Banford, who is revealed to be his half-sister. According to scholar Henry A. Murray, in writing Pierre Melville "purposed to write his spiritual autobiography in the form of a novel" rather than to experiment and incidentally work some personal experience into the novel.Published after the lukewarm reaction to Moby-Dick, Pierre was a critical and financial disaster. Reviewers universally condemned its morals and its style. More recent critics have shown greater sympathy toward the book, seeing it as a "psychological novel – a study of the moods, thought processes, and perceptions of his hero".
First lines, Bk. I, ch. 1
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
“All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.”
Bk. XIV, ch. 1
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Bk. IV
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Bk. XIV, ch. 1
A paraphrase of the last portion of this has sometimes been cited as a quotation of Melville: God's one and only voice is silence.
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Bk. III, ch. 1
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Bk. XXV, ch. 3
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Bk. IV
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Bk. XXV, ch. 3
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Bk. V, ch. 7
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Bk. XXV, ch. 4
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Bk. III, ch. 1
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Context: From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space. Wonder interlocks with wonder; and then the confounding feeling comes. No cause have we to fancy, that a horse, a dog, a fowl, ever stand transfixed beneath yon skyey load of majesty. But our soul's arches underfit into its; and so, prevent the upper arch from falling on us with unsustainable inscrutableness.
