Quote

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.

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
Underlying
Beseeching
Face
Spells
Profounder
Space
Visible
Evoking
Faces
Dumb
Evoked
Time
Thou
Uncovered
Surface
Surfaces
Hast
Infinite
Countenance
Mystery

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
Herman Melville
Image
Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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
Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.
Herman Melville
Image
If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
Herman Melville
Image
There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
Herman Melville
Image
Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'
Herman Melville
Image
That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at differentperiods, as much at variance with itself as the caterpillar is with the butterfly into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.
Herman Melville
Image
It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Herman Melville
Image
Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.
Herman Melville
Image
Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?
Herman Melville
Image
People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?
Herman Melville
Image
If not against us, nature is not for us.
Herman Melville
Image
There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.
Herman Melville
Image
Truth is in things, and not in words.
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
When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.
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
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
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
Herman Melville