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A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

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
Writing
Safer
Men
Bound
Bounds
Rate
Criticism
Brain
Better
Calf
Book
Calves

More quotes by Herman Melville

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To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
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Madman! Look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.
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All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
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The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.
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I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.
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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.
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Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
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But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.
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The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
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You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
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An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
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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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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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He who goes oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
Herman Melville
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
Herman Melville
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At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand and never slept so sound before
Herman Melville
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Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.
Herman Melville