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Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?
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
Lives
Reproach
Action
Wholly
Consequences
True
Ignorant
Nature
Actions
Time
Consequence
Spent
Foregone
Half
Reproaches
More quotes by Herman Melville
He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married.
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Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.
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Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true places never are.
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The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
Herman Melville
It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Herman Melville
You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.
Herman Melville
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.
Herman Melville
...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.
Herman Melville
The world is forever babbling of originality but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original the only original author being God.
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I never fancied broiling fowls - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.
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Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.
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Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.
Herman Melville
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.
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That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia.
Herman Melville
Some dying men are the most tyrannical and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
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Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.
Herman Melville
Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from that same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
Herman Melville
...that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
Herman Melville
At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
Herman Melville
My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
Herman Melville
