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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

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Herman Melville
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: August 1
Died: 1891
Died: September 28
Art Collector
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Lecturer
Literary Critic
Novelist
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Manhattan borough
New York City
Hermann Melville
Herman Melvill
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Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
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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.
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But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.
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Youth is the time when hearts are large.
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Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
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Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.
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Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe.
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A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.
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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.
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In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
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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.
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Ladies are like creeds if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.
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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.
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He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
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Nature is nobody's ally.
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Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.
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Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
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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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