Quote

Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.

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
Court
Happiness
Deem
Light
Aloof
World
Hides
Courts
Gay
Misery
None

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
Herman Melville
Image
God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates.
Herman Melville
Image
To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
Herman Melville
Image
True places are not found on maps.
Herman Melville
Image
Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
Herman Melville
Image
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her, borrowed from the sea by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
Herman Melville
Image
Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
Herman Melville
Image
Ladies are like creeds if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.
Herman Melville
Image
There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.
Herman Melville
Image
We die of too much life.
Herman Melville
Image
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.
Herman Melville
Image
He who goes oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
Herman Melville
Image
It is not down in any map true places never are.
Herman Melville
Image
Let us only hate hatred and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.
Herman Melville
Image
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before the world is not yet middle-aged.
Herman Melville
Image
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville
Image
We are only what we are not what we would be nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
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