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None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.

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
Really
Good
Belongs
Men
None
Life
Rest
Lives
Living
Death
Doe

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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?
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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?
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There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
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There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
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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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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
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Old age is always wakeful as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
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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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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
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For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men well enough they know they are in peril well enough they know the causes of that peril--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.
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As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
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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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truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
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People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.
Herman Melville
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To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
Herman Melville
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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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A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
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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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