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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.

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
Thinking
Deep
Treacherous
Wind
Winds
Open
Earnest
Effort
Shore
Heaven
Cast
Intrepid
Keep
Casts
Slavish
Earth
Independence
Conspire
Soul
Sea
Wildest

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To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
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The easiest way of life is the best.
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In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.
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Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
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We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow: and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound.
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As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.
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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.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it and irresponsibility but without licentious inclination.
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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.
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Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.
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All we discover has been with us since the sun began to roll and much we discover, is not worth the discovering.
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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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He who goes oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
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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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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.
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There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
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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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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
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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.
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