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A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.

Herman Melville

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Herman Melville
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: August 1
Died: 1891
Died: September 28
Art Collector
Essayist
Lecturer
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Sailor
Teacher
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Hermann Melville
Herman Melvill
Words
Language
Science
True
Mouthing
Hard
Proves
Things
Understands
Men
Thinks
Thinking
Communication

More quotes by Herman Melville

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I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, no matter how comical.
Herman Melville
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Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.
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This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant I act under orders.
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Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
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What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
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All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
Herman Melville
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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
Herman Melville
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The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
Herman Melville
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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
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...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.
Herman Melville
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Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.
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A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
Herman Melville
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The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
Herman Melville
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All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.
Herman Melville
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The man's (a heathen south sea islander) a human being, just as I am he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Herman Melville
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
Herman Melville
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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.
Herman Melville
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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
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Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.
Herman Melville