Quote

Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.

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
Ancients
Germs
Ignorant
Christianity
Principles
Though
Spirit

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
Herman Melville
Image
A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.
Herman Melville
Image
For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants . . .
Herman Melville
Image
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.
Herman Melville
Image
Benevolent desires, after passing a certain point, can not undertake their own fulfillment without incurring the risk of evils beyond those sought to be remedied.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
If not against us, nature is not for us.
Herman Melville
Image
How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.
Herman Melville
Image
Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.
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
Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
Herman Melville
Image
At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand and never slept so sound before
Herman Melville
Image
It is plain and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankee, and operates differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle.
Herman Melville
Image
You cannot hide the soul.
Herman Melville
Image
You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.
Herman Melville
Image
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
Herman Melville
Image
Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!
Herman Melville
Image
Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.
Herman Melville
Image
Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
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