Quote

What man who carries a heavenly soul in him, has not groaned to perceive, that unless he committed a sort of suicide as to the practical things of this world, he never can hope to regulate his earthly conduct by that same heavenly soul?

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
Soul
Practical
Things
Heavenly
Groaned
Never
Perceive
Regulate
Men
Suicide
Earthly
World
Committed
Carries
Unless
Carrie
Sort
Conduct
Hope
Practicals

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
In childhood, death stirred me not in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.
Herman Melville
Image
Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
Herman Melville
Image
There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.
Herman Melville
Image
Thou wine art the friend of the friendless, though a foe to all.
Herman Melville
Image
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Herman Melville
Image
Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe.
Herman Melville
Image
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
Image
O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
Herman Melville
Image
Dollars damn me and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
Herman Melville
Image
Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.
Herman Melville
Image
Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
Herman Melville
Image
Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.
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
Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of common-placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve?
Herman Melville
Image
Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself but is an errand-boy in heaven nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power how then can this one small heart beat this one small brain think thoughts unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.
Herman Melville