Quote

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

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
Humanity

More quotes by 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
How it is I know not but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair.
Herman Melville
Image
The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
Herman Melville
Image
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
Herman Melville
Image
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Herman Melville
Image
Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
Herman Melville
Image
There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan.
Herman Melville
Image
Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
Herman Melville
Image
At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
Herman Melville
Image
A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.
Herman Melville
Image
We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
Herman Melville
Image
It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.
Herman Melville
Image
Will you, or will you not, quit me? I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. I would prefer not to quit you, he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
Herman Melville
Image
There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
Herman Melville
Image
Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
Herman Melville
Image
Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.
Herman Melville
Image
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia.
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
One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocence self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.
Herman Melville
Image
And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
Herman Melville