Quote

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.

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
Higher
Hand
Sure
Hands
Every
Woe
Delight
Bottom
Deep

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
Herman Melville
Image
He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity.
Herman Melville
Image
People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.
Herman Melville
Image
A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
Herman Melville
Image
All truth is profound.
Herman Melville
Image
Silence is the only Voice of our God.
Herman Melville
Image
It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
Herman Melville
Image
Love's secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to the transcendent and the infinite and so they are as airy bridges, by which ourfurther shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations whence all poetical, lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us, as though pearls should drop from rainbows.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.
Herman Melville
Image
I would prefer not to.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
Herman Melville
Image
At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.
Herman Melville
Image
Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
Herman Melville
Image
It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.
Herman Melville
Image
Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
Herman Melville
Image
To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
Herman Melville
Image
If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.
Herman Melville