Quote

Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?

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
Never
Principal
Quality
Literature
Gone
Nature
States

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
Youth is the time when hearts are large, And stirring wars Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn To the blade it draws.
Herman Melville
Image
As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing,never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.
Herman Melville
Image
Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.
Herman Melville
Image
An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
Herman Melville
Image
Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
Herman Melville
Image
Nature is nobody's ally.
Herman Melville
Image
Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.
Herman Melville
Image
all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.
Herman Melville
Image
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
Herman Melville
Image
We cannot live for ourselves alone.
Herman Melville
Image
I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, no matter how comical.
Herman Melville
Image
If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
Herman Melville
Image
The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
Herman Melville
Image
At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
Herman Melville
Image
Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
Herman Melville
Image
The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
Herman Melville
Image
My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
Herman Melville
Image
...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.
Herman Melville
Image
Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
Herman Melville
Image
The Past is the textbook of tyrants the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
Herman Melville