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

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
Ancients
Germs
Ignorant
Christianity
Principles
Though
Spirit

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To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
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To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
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Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.
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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.
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In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
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It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement.
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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
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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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Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
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Will you, or will you not, quit me? I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. I would prefer not to quit you, he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
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If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
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The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
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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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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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We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
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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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contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love.
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Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.
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Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
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