Quote

Let me look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better than to gaze upon God.

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
Upon
Eye
Better
Look
Human
Gaze
Humans
God
Looks
Sky
Sea

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
Herman Melville
Image
Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.
Herman Melville
Image
Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
Herman Melville
Image
All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
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
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.
Herman Melville
Image
All truth is profound.
Herman Melville
Image
We die, because we live.
Herman Melville
Image
To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
Herman Melville
Image
There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
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
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.
Herman Melville
Image
Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.
Herman Melville
Image
One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.
Herman Melville
Image
Love's secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to the transcendent and the infinite and so they are as airy bridges, by which ourfurther shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations whence all poetical, lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us, as though pearls should drop from rainbows.
Herman Melville
Image
My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
Herman Melville
Image
The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
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