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All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.

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
Remember
Endeavours
Hard
Oftener
Things
Endeavour
Would
Commands
Persuade
Hence
Command
God

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If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
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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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Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
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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.
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...a man of true science uses few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose Where as the smatterer in science...thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
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all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.
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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.
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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
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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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All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, The champions and enthusiasts of the state: Turbid ardors and vain joys Not barrenly abate-- Stimulants to the power mature, Preparatives of fate.
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To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
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There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
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Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.
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All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.
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Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.
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You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
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One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.
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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.
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The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
Herman Melville