Quote

There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

Herman Melville

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Purple
Dignity
Devil
Democracy
Hell
Devils
Literature
Rags
Whether
Equals
Wickedness

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.
Herman Melville
Image
I would prefer not to.
Herman Melville
Image
O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
Herman Melville
Image
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.
Herman Melville
Image
Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.
Herman Melville
Image
Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.
Herman Melville
Image
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
Herman Melville
Image
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville
Image
I will frankly confess that after passing a few weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of- war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.
Herman Melville
Image
Benevolent desires, after passing a certain point, can not undertake their own fulfillment without incurring the risk of evils beyond those sought to be remedied.
Herman Melville
Image
Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
Herman Melville
Image
You cannot hide the soul.
Herman Melville
Image
To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
Herman Melville
Image
Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.
Herman Melville
Image
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
Herman Melville
Image
Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
Herman Melville
Image
What like a bullet can undeceive!
Herman Melville
Image
But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.
Herman Melville
Image
Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
Herman Melville
Image
We cannot live for ourselves alone.
Herman Melville