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It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

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
Without
Apparently
Writing
Throwing
Oneself
Impossible
Open
Literature
Talk
Write
Helplessly

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Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
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All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.
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If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.
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The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
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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.
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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.
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Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
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How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.
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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
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No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one- I mean a downright bumpkin dandy- a fellow that, in the dog-days of summer, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.
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Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!
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Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
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The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
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The shadows of things are greater than themselves and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.
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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
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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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Failure is the test of greatness.
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Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
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