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In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.

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
Order
Relaxes
Nature
Armies
Nothing
Navy
Good
Relax
Families
Misery
Army
Cities
Navies

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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
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People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?
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I am past scorching not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.
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Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
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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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The Past is the textbook of tyrants the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
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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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At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
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Book! You lie there the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
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The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
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To the last, I grapple with thee From Hell's heart, I stab at thee For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
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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.
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The friendship of fine-hearted, generous boys, nurtured amid the romance-engendering comforts and elegancies of life, sometimes transcends the bounds of mere boyishness, and revels for a while in the empyrean of a love which only comes short, by one degree, of the sweetest sentiment entertained between the sexes.
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I would prefer not to.
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Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
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